Takeovers are usually friendly affairs. Corporate executives engage in top-secret talks, with one company or group of investors making a bid for another business. After some negotiating, the companies engaged in the merger or acquisition announce a deal has been struck.
But other takeovers are more hostile in nature. Not every company wants to be taken over. This is the case with Elon Musk’s US$43 billion bid to buy Twitter.
Companies have various measures in their arsenal to ward off such unwanted advances. One of the most effective anti-takeover measures is the shareholder rights plan, also more aptly known as a “poison pill.” It is designed to block an investor from accumulating a majority stake in a company.
There are many variants of poison pills, but they generally increase the number of shares, which then dilutes the bidder’s stake and causes them a significant financial loss.
Let’s say a company has 1,000 shares outstanding valued at $10 each, which means the company has a market value of $10,000. An activist investor purchases 100 shares at the cost of $1,000 and accumulates a significant 10% stake in the company. But if the company has a poison pill that is triggered once any hostile bidder owns 10% of its stock, all other shareholders would suddenly have the opportunity to buy additional shares at a discounted price – say, half the market price. This has the effect of quickly diluting the activist investor’s original stake and also making it worth a lot less than it was before.
Twitter adopted a similar measure. If any shareholder accumulates a 15% stake in the company in a purchase not approved by the board of directors, other shareholders would get the right to buy additional shares at a discount, diluting the 9.2% stake Musk recently purchased.
Poison pills are useful in part because they can be adopted quickly, but they usually have expiration dates. The poison pill adopted by Twitter, for example, expires in one year.
No one has ever triggered – or swallowed – a poison pill that was designed to fend off an unsolicited takeover offer, showing how effective such measures are at fending off takeover attempts.
These types of anti-takeover measures are generally frowned upon as a poor corporate governance practice that can hurt a company’s value and performance. They can be seen as impediments to the ability of shareholders and outsiders to monitor management, and more about protecting the board and management than attracting more generous offers from potential buyers.
A poison pill isn’t foolproof, however. A bidder facing a poison pill could try to argue that the board is not acting in the best interests of shareholders and appeal directly to them through either a tender offer – buying shares directly from other shareholders at a premium in a public bid – or a proxy contest, which involves convincing enough fellow shareholders to join a vote to oust some or all of the existing board.
The Easter Bunny is a much celebrated character in American Easter celebrations. On Easter Sunday, children look for hidden special treats, often chocolate Easter eggs, that the Easter Bunny might have left behind.
Easter is a celebration of spring and new life. Eggs and flowers are rather obvious symbols of female fertility, but in European traditions, the bunny, with its amazing reproduction potential, is not far behind.
In European traditions, the Easter Bunny is known as the Easter Hare. The symbolism of the hare has had many tantalizing ritual and religious roles down through the years.
Hares were given ritual burials alongside humans during the Neolithic age in Europe. Archaeologists have interpreted this as a religious ritual, with hares representing rebirth.
Over a thousand years later, during the Iron Age, ritual burials for hares were common, and in 51 B.C., Julius Caesar mentions that in Britain, hares were not eaten, due to their religious significance.
From the Greek world through the Renaissance, hares often appear as symbols of sexuality in literature and art. For example, the Virgin Mary is often shown with a white hare or rabbit, symbolizing that she overcame sexual temptation.
Hare meat and witches’ mischief
But it is in the folk traditions of England and Germany that the figure of the hare is specifically connected to Easter. Accounts from the 1600s in Germany describe children hunting for Easter eggs hidden by the Easter Hare, much as in the contemporary United States today.
Written accounts from England around the same time also mention the Easter Hare, particularly in terms of traditional Easter hare hunts, and the eating of hare meat at Easter.
One tradition, known as the “Hare Pie Scramble,” was held at Hallaton, a village in Leicestershire, England, which involved eating a pie made with hare meat and people “scrambling” for a slice. In 1790, the local parson tried to stop the custom due to its pagan associations, but he was unsuccessful, and the custom continues in that village until this day.
The eating of the hare may have been associated with various longstanding folk traditions of scaring away witches at Easter. Throughout Northern Europe, folk traditions record a strong belief that witches would often take the form of the hare, usually for causing mischief such as stealing milk from neighbors’ cows. Witches in medieval Europe were often believed to be able to suck out the life energy of others, making them ill, and suffer.
The idea that the witches of winter should be banished at Easter is a common European folk motif, appearing in several festivities and rituals. The spring equinox, with its promise of new life, was held symbolically in opposition to the life-draining activities of witches and winter.
This idea provides the underlying rationale behind various festivities and rituals, such as the “Osterfeuer,” or the Easter Fire, a celebration in Germany involving large outdoor bonfires meant to scare away witches. In Sweden, the popular folklore states that at Easter, the witches all fly away on their broomsticks to feast and dance with the Devil on the legendary island of Blåkulla, in the Baltic Sea.
Pagan origins
In 1835, the folklorist Jacob Grimm, one of the famous team of the fairy tale “Brothers Grimm,” argued that the Easter Hare was connected with a goddess, whom he imagined would have been called “Ostara” in ancient German. He derived this name from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, that Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk considered to be the father of English history, mentioned in 731.
Bede noted that in eighth-century England the month of April was called Eosturmonath, or Eostre Month, named after the goddess Eostre. He wrote that a pagan festival of spring in the name of the goddess had become assimilated into the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
It’s interesting that while most European languages refer to the Christian holiday with names that come from the Jewish holiday of Passover, such as Pâques in French, or Påsk in Swedish, German and English languages retain this older, non-biblical word, Easter.
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After a long, cold, northern winter, it seems natural enough for people to celebrate themes of resurrection and rebirth. The flowers are blooming, birds are laying eggs, and baby bunnies are hopping about.
As new life emerges in spring, the Easter Bunny hops back once again, providing a longstanding cultural symbol to remind us of the cycles and stages of our own lives.
We do not know who first started applying mathematics to scientific study, but it is plausible that it was the Babylonians, who used it to discover the pattern underlying eclipses, nearly 3,000 years ago. But it took 2,500 years and the invention of calculus and Newtonian physics to explain the patterns. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rx-5dCXx1SI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Science Magazine looks at Babylonian clay tablets that contained mathematical formulas that are a precursor to calculus.
Since then, probably every single major scientific discovery has used mathematics in some form, simply because it is far more powerful than any other human language. It is not surprising that this has led many people to claim that mathematics is much more: that the universe is created by a mathematician.
So could we imagine a universe in which mathematics does not work?
The language of mathematics
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that you cannot discuss a concept unless you have the language to describe it.
In any science, and physics in particular, we need to describe concepts that do not map well on to any human language. One can describe an electron, but the moment we start asking questions like “What colour is it?” we start to realize the inadequacies of English.
The colour of an object depends on the wavelengths of light reflected by it, so an electron has no colour, or more accurately, all colours. The question itself is meaningless. But ask “How does an electron behave?” and the answer is, in principle, simple. In 1928, Paul A.M. Dirac wrote down an equation that describes the behaviour of an electron almost perfectly under all circumstances. This does not mean it is simple when we look at the details.
For example, an electron behaves as a tiny magnet. The magnitude can be calculated, but the calculation is horrendously complicated. Explaining an aurora, for example, requires us to understand orbital mechanics, magnetic fields and atomic physics, but at heart, these are just more mathematics.
But it is when we think of the individual that we realize that a human commitment to logical, mathematical thinking goes much deeper. The decision to overtake a slow-moving car does not involve the explicit integration of the equations of motion, but we certainly do it implicitly. A Tesla on autopilot will actually solve them explicitly.
When overtaking a car, a Tesla will explicitly calculate what a human driver processes implicitly. (Shutterstock)
Predicting chaos
So we really should not be surprised that mathematics is not just a language for describing the external world, but in many ways the only one. But just because something can be described mathematically does not mean it can be predicted.
One of the more remarkable discoveries of the last 50 years has been the discovery of “chaotic systems.” These can be apparently simple mathematical systems that cannot be solved precisely. It turns out that many systems are chaotic in this sense. Hurricane tracks in the Caribbean are superficially similar to eclipse tracks, but we cannot predict them precisely with all the power of modern computers.
However, we understand why: the equations that describe weather are intrinsically chaotic, so we can make accurate predictions in the short term, (about 24 hours), but these become increasingly unreliable over days. Similarly, quantum mechanics provides a theory where we know precisely what predictions cannot be made precisely. One can calculate the properties of an electron very accurately, but we cannot predict what an individual one will do.
Hurricanes are obviously intermittent events, and we cannot predict when one will happen in advance. But the mere fact that we cannot predict an event precisely does not mean we cannot describe it when it happens. We can even handle one-off events: it is generally accepted that the universe was created in the Big Bang and we have a remarkably precise theory of that.
Designing social systems
A whole host of social phenomena, from the stock market to revolutions, lack good predictive mathematics, but we can describe what has happened and to some extent construct model systems.
So how about personal relationships? Love may be blind, but relationships are certainly predictable. The vast majority of us choose partners inside our social class and linguistic group, so there is absolutely no doubt that is true in the statistical sense.
But it is also true in the local sense. A host of dating sites make their money by algorithms that at least make some pretence at matching you to your ideal mate. In a TED talk, futurist Amy Webb shows that mathematics actually works in dating algorithms.
A universe that could not be described mathematically would need to be fundamentally irrational and not merely unpredictable. Just because a theory is implausible does not mean we could not describe it mathematically.
But I do not think we live in that universe, and I suspect we cannot imagine a non-mathematical universe.
Cannabis has been used by humans for thousands of years and is one of the most popular drugs today. With effects such as feelings of joy and relaxation, it is also legal to prescribe or take in several countries.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that, in 2018, approximately 192 million people worldwide aged between 15 and 64 used cannabis recreationally. Young adults are particularly keen, with 35% of people between the ages of 18 and 25 using it, while only 10% of people over the age of 26 do.
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. It acts on the brain’s “endocannabinoid system”, which are receptors which respond to the chemical components of cannabis. The cannabis receptors are densely populated in prefrontal and limbic areas in the brain, which are involved in reward and motivation. They regulate signalling of the brain chemicals dopamine, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate.
We know that dopamine is involved in motivation, reward and learning. GABA and glutamate play a part in cognitive processes, including learning and memory.
Cognitive effects
Cannabis use can affect cognition, especially in those with cannabis-use disorder. This is characterised by the persistent desire to use the drug and disruption to daily activities, such as work or education. It has been estimated that approximately 10% of cannabis users meet the diagnostic criteria for this disorder.
In our research, we tested the cognition of 39 people with the disorder (asked to be clean on the day of testing), and compared it with that of 20 people who never or rarely used cannabis. We showed that participants with the condition had significantly worse performance on memory tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) compared to the controls, who had either never or very rarely used cannabis. It also negatively affected their “executive functions”, which are mental processes including flexible thinking.
This effect seemed to be linked to the age at which people started taking the drug – the younger they were, the more impaired their executive functioning was.
Cognitive impairments have been noted in mild cannabis users as well. Such users tend to make riskier decisions than others and have more problems with planning.
Although most studies have been conducted in males, there has been evidence of sex differences in the effects of cannabis use on cognition. We showed that, while male cannabis users had poorer memory for visually recognising things, female users had more problems with attention and executive functions. These sex effects persisted when controlling for age; IQ; alcohol and nicotine use; mood and anxiety symptoms; emotional stability; and impulsive behaviour.
Reward, motivation and mental health
Cannabis use can also affect how we feel – thereby further influencing our thinking. For example, some previous research has suggested that reward and motivation – along with the brain circuits involved in these processes – can be disrupted when we use cannabis. This may affect our performance at school or work as it can make us feel less motivated to work hard, and less rewarded when we do well.
In our recent study, we used a brain imaging task, in which participants were placed in a scanner and viewed orange or blue squares. The orange squares would lead to a monetary reward, after a delay, if the participant made a response. This set up helped us investigate how the brain responds to rewards.
We focused particularly on the ventral striatum, which is a key region in the brain’s reward system. We found that the effects on the reward system in the brain were subtle, with no direct effects of cannabis in the ventral striatum. However, the participants in our study were moderate cannabis users. The effects may be more pronounced in cannabis users with more severe and chronic use, as seen in cannabis use disorder.
There is also evidence that cannabis can lead to mental health problems. We have shown that it is related to higher “anhedonia” – an inability to feel pleasure – in adolescents. Interestingly, this effect was particularly pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Cannabis use during adolescence has also been reported as a risk factor for developing psychotic experiences as well as schizophrenia. One study showed that cannabis use moderately increases the risk of psychotic symptoms in young people, but that it has a much stronger effect in those with a predisposition for psychosis (scoring highly on a symptom checklist of paranoid ideas and psychoticism).
Assessing 2,437 adolescents and young adults (14-24 years), the authors reported a six percentage points increased risk – from 15% to 21% – of psychotic symptoms in cannabis users without a predisposition for psychosis. But there was a 26-point increase in risk – from 25% to 51% – of psychotic symptoms in cannabis users with a predisposition for psychosis.
We don’t really know why cannabis is linked to psychotic episodes, but hypotheses suggests dopamine and glutamate may be important in the neurobiology of these conditions.
Another study of 780 teenagers suggested that the association between cannabis use and psychotic experiences was also linked to a brain region called the “uncus”. This lies within the parahippocampus (involved in memory) and olfactory bulb (involved in processing smells), and has a large amount of cannabinoid receptors. It has also previously been associated with schizophrenia and psychotic experiences.
Cognitive and psychological effects of cannabis use are ultimately likely to depend to some extent on dosage (frequency, duration and strength), sex, genetic vulnerabilities and age of onset. But we need to determine whether these effects are temporary or permanent. One article summarising many studies has suggested that with mild cannabis use, the effects may weaken after periods of abstinence.
But even if that’s the case, it is clearly worth considering the effects that prolonged cannabis use can have on our minds – particularly for young people whose brains are still developing.
The United States has become a nation divided over importantissues in K-12 education, including which books students should be able to read in public school.
Efforts to ban books from school curricula, remove books from libraries and keep lists of books that some find inappropriate for students are increasing as Americans become more polarized in their views.
These types of actions are being called “book banning.” They are also often labeled “censorship.”
But the concept of censorship, as well as legal protections against it, are often highly misunderstood. A 2021 campaign ad for Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin focuses on a book with what one mother claimed was “explicit material.”
Book banning by the political right and left
On the right side of the political spectrum, where much of the book banning is happening, bans are taking the form of school boards’ removing books from class curricula.
Politicians have also proposed legislation banning books that are what some legislators and parents consider too mature for school-age readers, such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which explores queer themes and topics of consent. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s classic “The Bluest Eye,” which includes themes of rape and incest, is also a frequent target.
In some cases, politicians have proposed criminal prosecutions of librarians in public schools and libraries for keeping such books in circulation.
There are also some attempts on the political left to engage in book banning as well as removal from school curricula of books that marginalize minorities or use racially insensitive language, like the popular “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Defining censorship
Whether any of these efforts are unconstitutional censorship is a complex question.
The First Amendment protects individuals against the government’s “abridging the freedom of speech.” However, government actions that some may deem censorship – especially as related to schools – are not always neatly classified as constitutional or unconstitutional, because “censorship” is a colloquial term, not a legal term.
Some principles can illuminate whether and when book banning is unconstitutional.
For example, if the government tries to forbid certain types of protests solely based on the viewpoint of the protesters, that is an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The government cannot create laws or allow lawsuits that keep you from having particular books on your bookshelf, unless the substance of those books fits into a narrowly defined unprotected category of speech such as obscenity or libel. And even these unprotected categories are defined in precise ways that are still very protective of speech.
The government, however, may enact reasonable regulations that restrict the “time, place or manner” of your speech, but generally it has to do so in ways that are content- and viewpoint-neutral. The government thus cannot restrict an individual’s ability to produce or listen to speech based on the topic of the speech or the ultimate opinions expressed.
And if the government does try to restrict speech in these ways, it likely constitutes unconstitutional censorship.
What’s not unconstitutional
In contrast, when private individuals, companies and organizations create policies or engage in activities that suppress people’s ability to speak, these private actions don’t violate the Constitution.
A school board in Tennessee in February 2022 ordered the removal of the award-winning 1986 graphic novel on the Holocaust, ‘Maus,’ by Art Spiegelman, from local student libraries.
The Constitution’s general theory of liberty considers freedom in the context of government restraint or prohibition. Only the government has a monopoly on the use of force that compels citizens to act in one way or another. In contrast, if private companies or organizations chill speech, other private companies can experiment with different policies that allow people more choices to speak or act freely.
Still, private action can have a major impact on a person’s ability to speak freely and the production and dissemination of ideas. For example, book burning or the actions of private universities in punishing faculty for sharing unpopular ideas thwarts free discussion and unfettered creation of ideas and knowledge.
When schools can ‘ban’ books
It’s hard to definitively say whether the current incidents of book banning in schools are constitutional – or not. The reason: Decisions made in public schools are analyzed by the courts differently than censorship in nongovernment contexts.
Control over public education, in the words of the Supreme Court, is for the most part given to “state and local authorities.” The government has the power to determine what is appropriate for students and thus the curriculum at their school.
However, students retain some First Amendment rights: Public schools may not censor students’ speech, either on or off campus, unless it is causing a “substantial disruption.”
But officials may exercise control over the curriculum of a school without trampling on students’ or K-12 educators’ free speech rights.
There are exceptions to government’s power over school curriculum: The Supreme Court ruled, for example, that a state law banning a teacher from covering the topic of evolution was unconstitutional because it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from endorsing a particular religion.
School boards and state legislators generally have the final say over what curriculum schools teach. Unless states’ policies violate some other provision of the Constitution – perhaps the protection against certain kinds of discrimination – they are generally constitutionally permissible.
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Schools, with finite resources, also have discretion to determine which books to add to their libraries. However, several members of the Supreme Court have written that removal is constitutionally permitted only if it is done based on the educational appropriateness of the book, but not because it was intended to deny students access to books with which school officials disagree.
Book banning is not a new problem in this country – nor is vigorous public criticism of such moves. And even though the government has discretion to control what’s taught in school, the First Amendment ensures the right of free speech to those who want to protest what’s happening in schools.
Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.
The analysis also shows how much they paid in federal income taxes — and it demonstrates how the American tax system, which theoretically makes the highest earners pay the highest income tax rates, fails to do so for the people at the very top of the income pyramid.
The top 400 earners pay noticeably lower tax rates than the merely rich; and, if you include payroll taxes, a married couple making $200,000 a year could end up paying higher tax rates than a person making $200 million a year. (The full analysis is here; it includes selected names beyond the top 15.)
Names That Won’t Surprise You
Scan the names on the list of the top 15 income earners and you’re certain to recognize several names — or at least the names of the companies they founded. Bill Gates hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft for over a decade, yet he still earned the most during the years we studied, reporting an average yearly income of $2.85 billion — and an effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Steve Ballmer, his former colleague, is also a well-known public figure, both for his time as Microsoft CEO and his current ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team.
Ballmer’s average annual reported income of $1.05 billion landed him in the 10th spot on the list, and his effective federal income tax rate was 14.1%. The other side of the PC/Mac wars is represented here by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.
Her average reported income of $1.57 billion ranked fifth-highest; she paid an effective tax rate of 14.8%. (ProPublica sought comment from everyone mentioned in this article. Nobody disputed the numbers cited here. Unless otherwise noted, representatives for people named in this article either declined to comment, declined to comment on the record or did not respond to requests for comment.)
Another well-known billionaire sits just below Gates on the list: Media and tech mogul and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, with an average reported income of just over $2 billion, paid an effective income tax rate of 4.1%, by far the lowest rate among the top 15. (A spokesperson told ProPublica for an earlier article that Bloomberg “pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” and cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving.)
The presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — either the first- or second-wealthiest person in America, depending on the day — won’t shock most people, but Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.
Who Are These Others and Why Are They Paying Higher Tax Rates?
Tech billionaires dominate the top 15, but hedge fund managers account for a full third of the names on this list, and some of their incomes were just as huge. Most of them paid relatively high effective tax rates, especially compared to most of the tech sector representatives. Hedge fund managers often make their money through short-term trades, which are taxed at a much higher rate than when tech titans cash in on long-term investments.
The highest-earning hedge funder is Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based firm Citadel. From 2013 to 2018, he reported an average income of nearly $1.7 billion, putting him fourth on the list. Griffin paid a tax rate of 29.2% during these years. (A spokesperson for Griffin said the tax rates in the IRS data “significantly understate” what Griffin pays, because they were lowered by charitable contributions and do not reflect local and state taxes. He also said Griffin pays foreign taxes, which aren’t included in IRS calculations of effective tax rate.)
Israel Englander, co-founder of Millennium Management, paid at a 30.8% rate, while the co-founders of Two Sigma Investments, David Siegel and John Overdeck, paid tax rates of 31.6% and 34.2%, respectively.
Some of this variation in rates reflects how people structure their businesses under tax law. Income earned by publicly traded corporations is taxed at the company level. When it’s passed on to big shareholders, such as tech billionaires, it can come in the form of dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. By contrast, the income from some manufacturing companies and hedge funds flows directly to company owners, who pay taxes on it, resulting in higher effective tax rates on average.
Where Are the Heirs?
Lists of the world’s wealthiest individuals are always heavily populated by heirs, ranging from descendents of old money to scions of more recently minted fortunes. Dozens of heirs made ProPublica’s list of 400 biggest income earners. Descendents and relatives of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, claim 11 spots.
The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, also have multiple members in the top 400. Perhaps the best known is Betsy DeVos, who served as U.S. secretary of education during the Donald Trump administration. With a reported annual income of $112 million, she was the 389th-highest earner in this period.
Much like the tech titans who top the list, most of these heirs get their income from dividends or long-term investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their effective tax rates ranged from as low as 10.6% for Betsy DeVos to a high of 23% paid by Walmart heirTom Walton.
Don’t Forget the Deductions
Another key way that some top earners reduced their tax liability was to claim significant deductions, often in the form of large charitable contributions. This is particularly true for wealthy investors who are able to make their donations with shares of stock. Thanks to a generous provision of the tax code, they can then deduct the full value of the stock at its current price — without having to first sell it and pay capital gains tax.
Michael Bloomberg achieved a tax rate of 4.1% from 2013 to 2018 by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions. From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $400 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes. The 2018 tax overhaul limited that deduction to $10,000 — but also introduced a huge new deduction for pass-through companies that Bloomberg benefited from.
Wait — What About the Celebrities?
The earnings of actors, musicians and sports stars are a subject of nonstop scrutiny in the media, yet few celebrities cracked the list of the top 400 earners, which would have required them to report annual incomes of at least $110 million.
ProPublica’s trove has data on many celebrities. One who came close to the top 400 is basketball superstar LeBron James, who averaged $96 million a year in reported income. Grammy-winning singer Taylor Swift also came within reach of the top 400, averaging $82 million in reported income during these years. Actor George Clooney would have had to double his average income of $55 million to crack the top 400.
Why do cats’ eyes glow in the dark? Chloe, age 10, Barkhamsted, Connecticut
Cats and many other animals, including most dogs, can reflect light from their eyes. That’s why cats’ eyes will usually shine brightly in photos taken in a dimly lit room or glow when illuminated in the dark by a flashlight or a car’s headlights.
Species whose eyes glow have evolved to see better in low light because they either forage or need to look out for predators throughout the night, or they do most of their hunting at dawn and dusk. In fact, domesticated cats can see in conditions that are only 16% as bright as what people require.
Above: Photo / Adobe Stock
Cats accomplish this because their pupils – the openings that appear black in the middle of their eyes that widen and narrow in response to light conditions – are special. Pupils operate like windows, with bigger ones letting more light into the eye. And a cat’s pupils can become up to 50% larger than human pupils in dim light. They also have a higher number of a specific type of light-sensing cell in the back of their eyes than we do. These cells, called rods, catch low-level light.
Humans do not have a tapetum lucidum but cats, including lynxes and pumas, do. The Open University, CC BY-SA
The tapetum lucidum
In addition to having large pupils and lots of rods, cats have something people don’t: a tapetum lucidum, a Latin medical term that translates to “bright or shining tapestry.” The tapetum lucidum is also known as “eyeshine.”
It’s located in the back of the eye behind the retina – a thin layer of tissue that receives light, converts the light to an electrical signal and sends this signal to the brain to interpret the image.
A cat’s tapetum lucidum is made up of cells with crystals that, like a mirror, reflect light back to the retina. This gives the retina a second chance to absorb more light.
The feline tapetum lucidum is special because its reflective compound is riboflavin, a type of vitamin B. Riboflavin has unique properties that amplify light to a specific wavelength that cats can see well, which greatly increases the sensitivity of the retina to low light.
In cats, the tapetum most often glows yellow-green or yellow-orange, but the color varies, just like their irises – the colorful part of their eye, which can be green, yellow, blue or golden. Variation in tapetum color is not unique to cats and can be found in lots of species.
Most dogs’ eyes will glow in dark spaces when a light shines on them. Tommy Greco, CC BY-SA
Other animals’ eyes glow too
Many other animals that need to see at night have a tapetum lucidum. That includes predators and prey alike, everything from wild foxes to farmed sheep and goats.
The tapetum lucidum is also useful to fish, dolphins and other aquatic animals, because it helps them see better in murky, dark water.
In land animals, the tapetum is found in the top half of the eye behind the retina, because they need to see what is on the ground best. But in aquatic animals the tapetum takes up most of the eye, because they need to see all around them in the dark.
Like cats, the lemur, a small primate, and its close relative, the bush baby – also known as a “night monkey” – also have a superreflective tapetum made with riboflavin.
Even though a lot of animals have eyeshine, some small domesticated dogs lack this trait. Most animals with blue eyes and white or light-colored coats have also lost this trait.
So don’t be alarmed if your dog’s or cat’s eyes don’t glow. The list of other species without a tapetum lucidum includes pigs, birds, reptiles and most rodents and primates – including humans.
Is there a downside?
Unfortunately, animals with a tapetum lucidum sacrifice some visual acuity for their ability to see in dim light.
That’s because all that light bouncing around as it reflects off the tapetum can make what they see a little fuzzier. So, a cat needs to be seven times closer to an object to see it as sharply as a person would in a brightly lit place.
But don’t worry, I’m sure your cat would rather see clearly at night than read a book.
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As desirable vacation destinations go, war-torn Ukraine must surely rate low. But in the first month of Russia’s invasion, Airbnb bookings in Ukraine boomed, as people around the world used the accommodation platform to channel more than US$15 million in donations to the country.
As with other forms of direct donation, using Airbnb to channel aid to Ukraine has been problematic. The company was relatively quick to waive the 20% commission it usually charges on transactions. But stopping scammers from setting up fake accounts to collect money from well-meaning donors has proven more difficult.
It’s a story that illustrates both the potential and limitations of the so-called sharing economy.
Idealistic visionaries once imagined the internet would connect individual buyers and sellers, peer to peer (or P2P), without the need for intermediaries and their commissions. But this promise of market democratisation and inclusivity has largely failed to materialise.
Instead, the platforms that have arisen – eBay, Uber, Airbnb and so forth – are very much like traditional capitalist enterprises, putting the squeeze on rivals, exploiting labour, and making their founders and executives among the wealthiest people on the planet.
Platform capitalism
The founders of these companies didn’t necessarily begin with such ambitions. Airbnb’s founders, for example, started their website in 2007 to provide an alternative to mainstream hotels and motels, enabling anyone to offer a spare room or residence for short-term stays in the expensive San Francisco market.
Now Airbnb’s market capitalisation rivals that of the world’s biggest hotel chain, Marriott. In 2021, Airbnb reported US$1.6 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, compared with Marriott’s US$2 billion.
Co-founder and chief executive Brian Chesky’s personal fortune is an estimated US$14 billion, placing him 157th on Forbes’ world billionaires list.
The fortunes made by the dominant sharing platform have not all come from technological innovation.
There’s little that is democratic about these platforms. The owners have the last say in the equation, dictating which actions and exchanges are allowed or cancelled.
Creating a true sharing economy
Our research on the sharing economy shows that digital platforms can be a powerful tool for individuals to collaborate in developing solutions to their needs. But for the promise of the sharing economy to be realised, platforms must be far more open, democratic and publicly accountable than they are now.
As the non-profit P2P foundation argues, peer-to-peer networks create the potential to transition to a commons-oriented economy, focused on creating value for the world, not enriching shareholders.
For that to happen, all users must have input into decisions about why a platform exists and how it is used.
Examples of what is possible already exist. Perhaps the best known is Wikipedia – a hugely valuable service that runs on volunteer labour and donations. It’s not perfect but it’s hard to imagine it working as a for-profit enterprise.
There are many attempts to create collectively owned, more democratic sharing platforms. In New York, for example, drivers have organised to create ride-sharing alternatives to Uber and Lyft based on cooperative principles. Such endeavours are known as platform cooperativism.
But these ventures routinely struggle to raise the money needed to develop their platforms. Members also vary largely in their knowledge of business practices, particularly the skills needed to manage democratic decision making.
To help these platforms thrive, we need public policies that assist them to raise funds. We also need programs that deliver financial and business education to platform members.
Beyond these practical difficulties, users also need to have a stake in how these platforms run for them be a fully transformative version of the sharing economy.
We’ve drifted a long way from the early hopes for the sharing economy. But it’s not too late to change course and work to co-create more equitable, human-focused models of exchange.
New report lists Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Grubhub worker victims, and the tally is likely even higher
When the St. Louis police arrived on the scene last April, Lyft driver Elijah Newman was already dead. Officers found him in the driver’s seat of his car with a gunshot wound to his torso. In a probable cause statement provided to The Markup by the Circuit Attorney’s office, detectives say they located a bullet casing next to Newman’s body and a Lyft light affixed to the front dashboard.
“It was like a fist to the gut,” Elizabeth Hylton, Newman’s long-time friend and roommate, said when she heard the news.
Newman, an immigrant from Ghana, was one of more than 50 gig workers murdered while on the job over the past five years in the U.S., according to a new study published by worker advocacy group Gig Workers Rising.
The study draws data from The Markup’s report on 124 carjackings of ride-hail drivers, as well as news articles, police documents, legal filings, GoFundMe fundraisers, and other online searches. Gig Workers Rising said the study fills the void of any company or government data on the dangers of gig work. The Markup independently verified the incidents listed in the report.
“These are not one-off incidents,” said Lauren Jacobs, executive director of a coalition of nonprofits that focus on inequality, PowerSwitch Action, which contributed to the report. The companies don’t seem to be concerned enough with worker safety, she added.
“This is a pattern.”
According to a spreadsheet that Gig Workers Rising provided to The Markup, 22 of the workers were driving for Uber when they were killed, and four were couriers for Uber Eats. Seventeen were working for Lyft, eight for DoorDash, two for Instacart, one for Grubhub, and one for Postmates (which is owned by Uber). The Markup also independently verified the incidents in the spreadsheet, a handful of which the companies said happened after the worker had logged off the app.
It’s estimated that more than one million people in the U.S. work for one or more of these gig companies. The assaults happened across the country, from Arizona to Kentucky to Pennsylvania, and the majority happened in 2021, with 28 reported homicides. Seven murders tracked by Gig Workers Rising occurred in the first two months of this year alone.
Some of the workers were accidentally caught in drive-by shootings, others in road rage incidents or botched carjackings and robberies. While cities across the country have seen a rise in carjackings and associated crimes over the last couple of years, these incidents appear to be happening to gig workers at an especially high rate.
“Gig work is becoming increasingly dangerous,” said Bryant Greening, an attorney and co-founder of Chicago-based law firm LegalRideshare, who says he gets calls from gig workers who’ve been carjacked on a weekly basis. “Criminals see rideshare and delivery workers as sitting ducks, susceptible to carjackings, robberies, and assaults.”
Uber spokesperson Andrew Hasbun said, “Given the scale at which Uber and other platforms like ours operate, we are not immune from society’s challenges, including spikes in crime and violence.” He added that “we continue to invest heavily in new technologies to improve driver safety,” and “each of these incidents is a horrific tragedy that no family should have to endure.”
Lyft spokesperson Gabriela Condarco-Quesada said, “Since day one, we’ve built safety into every part of the Lyft experience. We are committed to doing everything we can to help protect drivers from crime, and will continue to invest in technology, policies and partnerships to make Lyft as safe as it can be.”
DoorDash spokesperson Julian Crowley, Instacart’s senior director of shopper engagement Natalia Montalvo, and Grubhub spokesperson Jenna DeMarco provided similar comments, saying that the companies take safety seriously and have protocols in place for emergency situations.
Gig Workers Rising said the tally of more than 50 workers “is not comprehensive and likely excludes many workers.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics and most police departments don’t compile data specifically on gig worker deaths. None of the gig companies The Markup contacted would say how many of their workers have been killed on the job. Uber’s Hasbun and Lyft’s Condarco-Quesada pointed The Markup to company safety reports, both of which had some data on fatal physical assaults for riders and drivers. The most recent data was from Lyft in 2019.
Gig Workers Rising said its spreadsheet includes only reported homicides, not traffic accidents or other causes of death. Most of those killed—63 percent—were people of color, according to the group, which also reported that several families say they received little support from the companies after the incidents.
Gig workers are treated as independent contractors by the companies, so they’re not given employee benefits like workers’ compensation, full company health insurance, or death benefits. When something goes wrong during rides or deliveries, workers and their families are often the ones shouldering medical costs, car payments, and funeral expenses.
Two drivers told The Markup that after they were carjacked, Uber and Lyft offered to help with some of their expenses only if they agreed to sign nondisclosure agreements.
Uber’s Hasbun didn’t respond to questions about nondisclosure agreements but said that “every situation is unique, we have programs in place to support families, including with insurance.” Similarly, Lyft’s Condarco-Quesada said, “While every situation is unique, our specialized group of trained Safety advocates work with the driver’s family to determine their specific needs and provide meaningful support to them directly.” Crowley, Montalvo, and DeMarco also said DoorDash, Instacart, and Grubhub reach out to support workers’ families in these instances and both DoorDash and Instacart offer injury protection insurance for free to eligible workers.
Along with its report, Gig Workers Rising demanded reforms from the companies, which included workers’ compensation for all drivers and couriers, the end to forced arbitration clauses in contracts so that workers can publicly pursue legal claims in court, and a requirement that the gig companies report worker deaths annually.
“No one when they show up to work should be killed,” Cherri Murphy, a former Lyft driver and organizer with Gig Workers Rising, said in a statement. “The lack of care for these workers is a direct outcome of a business model set up to milk as much as possible for executives.”
Some families have filed wrongful death lawsuits against the companies. Among them are the relatives of Uber driver Cherno Ceesay, a 28-year-old immigrant from Gambia who was allegedly fatally stabbed by two passengers while driving in Issaquah, Wash., and the family of Beaudouin Tchakounte, a 46-year-old Cameroonian immigrant who also drove for Uber and was allegedly shot to death by a passenger in Oxon Hill, Md.
A federal district court judge in Maryland dismissed Tchakounte’s case in February, but the family is appealing. Ceesay’s case is pending trial in a Washington federal district court later this year.
Uber’s Hasbun didn’t respond to requests for comment on the lawsuits.
Isabella Lewis was 26 years old when she was allegedly killed by a passenger in August 2021 near Dallas, Texas. According to Gig Workers Rising, Lyft hasn’t assisted the family, which started a GoFundMe page to raise money for Lewis’s funeral. Lewis’s sister, Alyssa Lewis, told Gig Workers Rising, “My sister lost her life over a Lyft trip that totaled … 15 dollars.”
Lyft’s Condarco-Quesada didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether the company provided support to Lewis’s family.
The Markup previously found that many gig drivers who were victims of carjackings were elderly, immigrants, and women. In addition to the 124 carjackings we first compiled, we also found that in Minneapolis alone nearly 50 Uber and Lyft drivers were carjacked during a two-month period from August to October 2021.
Some of the carjackings were random incidents, we found, but the majority of the attacks happened after drivers were paired with their would-be assailants by Uber’s or Lyft’s app—often with the passengers using fake names and fake profile pictures. Neither company requires riders to use a valid ID to sign up for the service, so passengers can be anonymous. The suspect in Elijah Newman’s case reportedly used a false name. Gig Workers Rising said this happened in some of the cases it tracked too.
Uber’s Hasbun said the company now requires new riders who sign up for the app and use anonymous forms of payment, like a gift card, to provide a valid ID. Lyft also has this requirement in a few U.S. cities. Neither Hasbun nor Lyft’s Condarco-Quesada responded to questions about why the companies don’t require all passengers to upload a valid ID.
“While the companies publicly tout their commitments to safety, workers quickly discover an alternative reality,” said LegalRideshare’s Greening. “Simply stated, gig workers and their families are left to fend for themselves.”
Among the many changes brought about by the pandemic is the widespread use of QR codes, graphical representations of digital data that can be printed and later scanned by a smartphone or other device.
QR codes have a wide range of uses that help people avoid contact with objects and close interactions with other people, including for sharing restaurant menus, email list sign-ups, car and home sales information, and checking in and out of medical and professional appointments.
QR codes are a close cousin of the bar codes on product packaging that cashiers scan with infrared scanners to let the checkout computer know what products are being purchased.
Bar codes store information along one axis, horizontally. QR codes store information in both vertical and horizontal axes, which allows them to hold significantly more data. That extra amount of data is what makes QR codes so versatile.
Anatomy of a QR code
While it is easy for people to read Arabic numerals, it is hard for a computer. Bar codes encode alphanumeric data as a series of black and white lines of various widths. At the store, bar codes record the set of numbers that specify a product’s ID. Critically, data stored in bar codes is redundant. Even if part of the bar code is destroyed or obscured, it is still possible for a device to read the product ID.
QR codes are designed to be scanned using a camera, such as those found on your smartphone. QR code scanning is built into many camera apps for Android and iOS. QR codes are most often used to store web links; however, they can store arbitrary data, such as text or images.
When you scan a QR code, the QR reader in your phone’s camera deciphers the code, and the resulting information triggers an action on your phone. If the QR code holds a URL, your phone will present you with the URL. Tap it, and your phone’s default browser will open the webpage.
QR codes are composed of several parts: data, position markers, quiet zone and optional logos.
The QR code anatomy: data (1), position markers (2), quiet zone (3) and optional logos (4). Scott Ruoti, CC BY-ND
The data in a QR code is a series of dots in a square grid. Each dot represents a one and each blank a zero in binary code, and the patterns encode sets of numbers, letters or both, including URLs. At its smallest this grid is 21 rows by 21 columns, and at its largest it is 177 rows by 177 columns. In most cases, QR codes use black squares on a white background, making the dots easy to distinguish. However, this is not a strict requirement, and QR codes can use any color or shape for the dots and background.
Position markers are squares placed in a QR code’s top-left, top-right, and bottom-left corners. These markers let a smartphone camera or other device orient the QR code when scanning it. QR codes are surrounded by blank space, the quiet zone, to help the computer determine where the QR code begins and ends. QR codes can include an optional logo in the middle.
Like barcodes, QR codes are designed with data redundancy. Even if as much as 30% of the QR code is destroyed or difficult to read, the data can still be recovered. In fact, logos are not actually part of the QR code; they cover up some of the QR code’s data. However, due to the QR code’s redundancy, the data represented by these missing dots can be recovered by looking at the remaining visible dots.
Are QR codes dangerous?
QR codes are not inherently dangerous. They are simply a way to store data. However, just as it can be hazardous to click links in emails, visiting URLs stored in QR codes can also be risky in several ways.
The QR code’s URL can take you to a phishing website that tries to trick you into entering your username or password for another website. The URL could take you to a legitimate website and trick that website into doing something harmful, such as giving an attacker access to your account. While such an attack requires a flaw in the website you are visiting, such vulnerabilities are common on the internet. The URL can take you to a malicious website that tricks another website you are logged into on the same device to take an unauthorized action.
A malicious URL could open an application on your device and cause it to take some action. Maybe you’ve seen this behavior when you clicked a Zoom link, and the Zoom application opened and automatically joined a meeting. While such behavior is ordinarily benign, an attacker could use this to trick some apps into revealing your data.
It is critical that when you open a link in a QR code, you ensure that the URL is safe and comes from a trusted source. Just because the QR code has a logo you recognize doesn’t mean you should click on the URL it contains.
There is also a slight chance that the app used to scan the QR code could contain a vulnerability that allows malicious QR codes to take over your device. This attack would succeed by just scanning the QR code, even if you don’t click the link stored in it. To avoid this threat, you should use trusted apps provided by the device manufacturer to scan QR codes and avoid downloading custom QR code apps.
“If everyone could see what I see coming,” said one scientist, “society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.”
More than 1,000 scientists across the globe chained themselves to the doors of oil-friendly banks, blocked bridges, and occupied the steps of government buildings on Wednesday to send an urgent message to the international community: The ecological crisis is accelerating, and only a “climate revolution” will be enough to avert catastrophe.
“World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane.”
What organizers described as “the world’s largest-ever scientist-led civil disobedience campaign” kicked off just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report detailing the grim state of efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C by century’s end, a target set by the Paris accord.
As one of the report’s authors put it during a press call earlier this week, “Unless there are immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, 1.5°C is beyond reach.”
Warning that the IPCC report’s language was watered downat the behest of governments unwilling to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, scientists and their allies took that message further during their direct actions on Wednesday, operating under the slogan “1.5°C is dead, climate revolution now!”
“I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.
“It’s the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” Kalmus continued. “World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don’t get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point.”
The Los Angeles demonstration was accompanied by other protests across the U.S., the largest historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide and home to some of the most powerful fossil fuel companies in the world.
In Washington, D.C., climate scientists chained themselves to the White House fence and were ultimately arrested as they demanded that U.S. President Joe Biden declare a “climate emergency,” a step that would unlock a range of tools needed to combat global warming.
“We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible,” said Dr. Rose Abramoff, one of the scientists arrested at the White House. “We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible.”
“I’m taking action to urge governments and society to stop ignoring the collective findings of decades of research,” Abramoff added. “Let’s make this crisis impossible to ignore.”
VIDEO THREAD: This afternoon, climate activists including scientist Rose Abramoff @ultracricket chained themselves to the White House fence to demand President Biden declare a "climate emergency" over shifting global temperatures. pic.twitter.com/aBBfXPqw5W
Similar acts of civil disobedience were held across the globe as scientists took to the streets to demand that governments ramp up their transitions to renewable energy as the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather, endangers critical ecosystems, and takes lives worldwide.
In Madrid, Spain, scientists splashed red paint on the walls and steps of the Congress of Deputies to decry lawmakers’ inaction in the face of the existential climate threat. More than 50 scientists were arrested during the demonstration, according to organizers.
Scientists also mobilized in Germany, blocking a bridge near the country’s parliament building.
A Scientist Rebellion activist holds a blue smoke can as police officers try to prevent them from throwing red paint at the exterior of the Spanish Parliament to protest climate change, in Madrid, Spain https://t.co/N5NXPJQEwR 📷 Susana Vera pic.twitter.com/7uC0tTKl3i
Scientists from across Germany blocked a bridge near the German Parliament, glueing and locking on in an act of civil resistance, calling out political mismanagement, lies and a business-as-usual mindset from Government figures which is leading us into a climate hell. @euronewshttps://t.co/yxPpAadp7gpic.twitter.com/ydXlLWS9Vc
— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) April 7, 2022
In an op-ed published in The Guardian on Wednesday, Kalmus warned that “Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize.”
“The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk,” he wrote. “For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the ‘business as usual’ occurring all around me. It’s so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it’s really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it’s really happening.”
“If everyone could see what I see coming,” Kalmus added, “society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.”
Despite most of us knowing we should cut down on salt, Australians consume on average almost twice the recommended daily maximum per day.
Salt has been used in food preservation for centuries, and idioms like “worth your weight in salt” indicate how valuable it was for preserving food to ensure survival. Salt draws moisture out of foods, which limits bacterial growth that would otherwise spoil food and cause gastrointestinal illnesses. Today, salt is still added as a preservative, but it also improves the taste of foods.
Salt is a chemical compound made of sodium and chloride, and this is the main form in which we consume it in our diet. Of these two elements, it’s the sodium we need to worry about.
So what does sodium do in our bodies?
The major concern of consuming too much sodium is the well-established link to the increased risk of high blood pressure (or hypertension). High blood pressure is in turn a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, a major cause of severe illness and death in Australia. High blood pressure is also a cause of kidney disease.
Most of the salt we consume is from processed foods. Shutterstock
The exact processes that lead to high blood pressure from eating large amounts of sodium are not fully understood. However, we do know it’s due to physiological changes that occur in the body to tightly control the body’s fluid and sodium levels. This involves changes in how the kidneys, heart, nervous system and fluid-regulating hormones respond to increasing sodium levels in our body.
Maintaining tight control on sodium levels is necessary because sodium affects the membranes of all the individual cells in your body. Healthy membranes allow for the movement of:
nutrients in and out of the cells
signals through the nervous system (for example, messages from the brain to other parts of your body).
Dietary salt is needed for these processes. However, most of us consume much, much more than we need.
When we eat too much salt, this increases sodium levels in the blood. The body responds by drawing more fluid into the blood to keep the sodium concentration at the right level. However, by increasing the fluid volume, the pressure against the blood vessel walls is increased, leading to high blood pressure.
High blood pressure makes the heart work harder, which can lead to disease of the heart and blood vessels, including heart attack and heart failure.
While there is some controversy around the effect of salt on blood pressure, most of the literature indicates there is a progressive association, which means the more sodium you consume, the more likely you are to die prematurely.
What to watch out for
Certain groups of people are more affected by high-salt diets than others. These people are referred to as “salt-sensitive”, and are more likely to get high blood pressure from salt consumption.
Those most at risk include older people, those who already have high blood pressure, people of African-American background, those who have chronic kidney disease, those with a history of pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy), and those who had a low birth weight.
Optimal blood pressure is 120/80. Shutterstock
It is important to be aware of your blood pressure, so next time you visit your doctor make sure you get it checked. Your blood pressure is given as two figures: highest (systolic) over lowest (diastolic). Systolic is the pressure in the artery as the heart contracts and pushes the blood through your body. The diastolic pressure in the artery is when the heart is relaxing and being filled with blood.
Optimal blood pressure is below 120/80. Blood pressure is considered high if the reading is over 140/90. If you have other risk factors for heart disease, diabetes or kidney disease, a lower target may be set by your doctor.
How to reduce salt intake
Reducing salt in your diet is a good strategy to reduce your blood pressure, and avoiding processed and ultra-processed foods, which is where about 75% of our daily salt intake comes from, is the first step.
Try to use less salt in your cooking, but home prepared meals are not the worst culprit. Shutterstock
Increasing your intake of fruit and vegetables to at least seven serves per day may also be effective in reducing your blood pressure, as they contain potassium, which helps our blood vessels relax.
Increasing physical activity, stopping smoking, maintaining a healthy weight and limiting your alcohol intake will also help to maintain a healthy blood pressure. Blood pressure reducing medications are also available if blood pressure can not be reduced initially by lifestyle changes.
Two new Marvel heroes have been brought to the big and small screens that may be quite new to many people. The first is the titular character in the Disney+ series Moon Knight, starring Oscar Isaac, which is set in the main Marvel Cinematic Universe. The other is Morbius, an unlucky vampiric doctor, played by Jared Leto, who is the newest villain-turned-good-ish guy in the Sony Spider-Man Universe to get a film, after Venom.
These are stories featuring violent male anti-heroes – who are also characters fairly unknown to the general public. When the first Venom was released, The Hollywood Reporter noted: “The MCU makes it easy to be a Marvel fan without having ever read the source material”.
Morbius has not fared so well, bringing in the lowest box office numbers compared to its Spider-Man counterparts. Critics suggest that this might be due to the character’s “relative obscurity”. On the other hand, Moon Knight has garnered good reviews.
Like it or not, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is expanding and there are a whole host of new heroes making their way from the more obscure corners of the comic universe onto the screen. Here are five such characters who will be headlining new films and TV series as part of numerous forthcoming Marvel projects, from Disney’s Marvel Studios, and Sony.
1. Ms Marvel
The world’s first female, teen, Muslim superhero, Ms Marvel received a lot of praise when she made her debut in 2013 in a Captain marvel comic. Critics praised the character as a positive representation of a young Pakistani American woman who is also Muslim. This outing was so successful, the teen got her own comic the following year. She will also officially be joining Marvel’s Cinematic Universe in June 2022 with her own series on Disney+. https://www.youtube.com/embed/m9EX0f6V11Y?wmode=transparent&start=0
The series revolves around a young woman called Kamala Khan, who is a is a huge fan of superheroes. When she mysteriously gets powers, Khan is inspired by Captain Marvel to become a hero herself. Ms Marvel will be appearing alongside Captain Marvel and Photon in the 2023 film The Marvels.
Werewolf by Night will be MCU’s first horror outing. Marvel
Following the cinema release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, this will be the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first horror themed TV show. Featuring the somewhat prosaically named Jack Russell, Werewolf by Night ran for four years in the 1970s, following a relaxation on censorship of horror comics, which allowed for the creation of Marvel’s vampire characters Blade and Morbius in the first half of the decade.
Kraven is the orphaned son of Russian aristocrats with a penchant for hunting big game. While hunting in Africa, he ends up drinking a potion that gives him superhuman strength, speed and the instincts of a jungle cat. Bored of hunting animals he sets his sights on larger prey, Spider-Man.
Kraven first appeared in comics as Spider-Man’s foe in 1964. The maniacal hunter will be the third villain to lead a live-action Spider-Verse film. However, unlike Venom and Morbius before him, Kraven is not known in the comics for performing good deeds, so it will be an interesting challenge for Marvel to make an anti-hero of the artistocrat.
Kraven The Hunter is not a nice guy in the comics but is set to be an anti-hero in his first outing in the Spider-Man Sony universe. Marvel
Kraven rarely appears without Spider-Man in the comics so Sony have set themselves a challenge to flesh out the hunter in a film where his nemesis doesn’t appear. Kraven will be played by Aaron-Taylor Johnson, who is no stranger to a tight suit, having previously played the low-rent superhero Kick Ass in two films.
5. Silk
The first Spider-Man Sony universe TV show will feature Cindy Moon, a female student bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Spider-Man his abilities. However, unlike Peter Parker who was left to swing around New York and discover his new powers, Moon was kidnapped and held in a bunker for 13 years.
Silk was turned by the same spider as Spider-Man. Marvel/Wikimedia
With Sony’s films only apparently allowing for Spider-Man to be shown or discussed in their end credit scenes, it will be interesting to see how Silk deals with the heroine’s creation without any mention of Spidey – unless given permission by Disney to do so. There has been speculation that Sony may revive Andrew Garfield’s incarnation of the character in the future, so time will tell how Silk proceeds.
I’m not worried that truly valuable art can ever be canceled. Enduring works of literature are enduring, in part, because they are capacious enough to be read critically against the vicissitudes of the present.
After World War II, German critic Theodore Adorno described the Holocaust as a profound blow to Western culture and philosophy, even going so far as to question the very ability of human beings to “live after Auschwitz.”
This idea, born of the very specific context of the Holocaust, shouldn’t be haphazardly applied to the present moment. But following Adorno’s moral lead, I wonder whether – after the brutal shelling of the city of Mariupol, after the horrors on the streets of Bucha, along with atrocities committed in Kharkiv, Mykolaev, Kyiv and many more – the indiscriminate violence ought to change how readers approach Russia’s great authors.
Confronting suffering with clear eyes
Upon learning that Russian writer Ivan Turgenev had looked away at the last minute when witnessing the execution of a man, Dostoevsky made his own position clear: “[A] human being living on the surface of the earth has no right to turn away and ignore what is happening on earth, and there are higher moral imperatives for this.”
Seeing the rubble of a theater in Mariupol, hearing of Mariupol citizens starving because of Russian airstrikes, I wonder what Dostoevsky – who specifically focused his piercing moral eye on the question of the suffering of children in his 1880 novel “The Brothers Karamazov” – would say in response to the Russian army’s bombing a theater where children were sheltering. The word “children” was spelled out on the pavement outside the theater in large type so it could be seen from the sky. There was no misunderstanding of who was there.
Ivan Karamazov, the central protagonist in “The Brothers Karamazov,” is far more focused on questions of moral accountability than Christian acceptance or forgiveness and reconciliation. In conversation, Ivan routinely brings up examples of children’s being harmed, imploring the other characters to recognize the atrocities in their midst. He is determined to seek retribution.
Surely the intentional shelling of children in Mariupol is something Dostoevsky couldn’t possibly look away from either. Could he possibly defend a vision of Russian morality while seeing innocent civilians – men, women and children – lying on the streets of Bucha?
At the same time, nor should readers look away from the unseemliness of Dostoevsky and his sense of Russian exceptionalism. These dogmatic ideas about Russian greatness and Russia’s messianic mission are connected to the broader ideology that has fueled Russia’s past colonial mission, and current Russian foreign politics on violent display in Ukraine.
Yet Dostoevsky was also a great humanist thinker who tied this vision of Russian greatness to Russian suffering and faith. Seeing the spiritual value of human suffering was perhaps a natural outcome for a man sent to a labor camp in Siberia for five years for simply participating in a glorified socialist book club. Dostoevsky grew out of his suffering, but, arguably, not to a place where he could accept state-sponsored terror.
Would an author who, in his 1866 novel “Crime and Punishment,” explains in excruciating detail the toll of murder on the murderer – who explains that when someone takes a life, they kill part of themselves – possibly accept Putin’s vision of Russia? Warts and all, would Russia’s greatest metaphysical rebel have recoiled and rebelled against Russian violence in Ukraine?
No writer captures warfare in Russia more poignantly than Tolstoy, a former soldier turned Russia’s most famous pacifist. In his last work, “Hadji Murat,” which scrutinizes Russia’s colonial exploits in North Caucasus, Tolstoy showed how senseless Russian violence toward a Chechen village caused instant hatred of Russians.
Tolstoy’s greatest work about Russian warfare, “War and Peace,” is a novel that Russians have traditionally read during great wars, including World War II. In “War and Peace,” Tolstoy contends that the morale of the Russian military is the key to victory. The battles most likely to succeed are defensive ones, in which soldiers understand why they are fighting and what they are fighting to protect: their home.
Even then, he’s able to convey the harrowing experiences of young Russian soldiers coming into direct confrontation with the instruments of death and destruction on the battlefield. They disappear into the crowd of their battalion, but even a single loss is devastating for the families awaiting their safe return.
After publishing “War and Peace,” Tolstoy publicly denounced many Russian military campaigns. The last part of his 1878 novel “Anna Karenina” originally wasn’t published because it criticized Russia’s actions in the Russo-Turkish war. Tolstoy’s alter ego in that novel, Konstantin Levin, calls the Russian intervention in the war “murder” and thinks it is inappropriate that Russian people are dragged into it.
“The people sacrifice and are always prepared to sacrifice themselves for their soul, not for murder,” he says.
“Again war,” he wrote. “Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud, again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men.” One can almost hear him shouting “Bethink Yourselves,” the title of that essay, to his countrymen now.
In one of his most famous pacifist writings, 1900’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” Tolstoy presciently diagnosed the problem of today’s Russia.
“The misery of nations is caused not by particular persons, but by the particular order of Society under which the people are so bound up together that they find themselves all in the power of a few men, or more often in the power of one single man: a man so perverted by his unnatural position as arbiter of the fate and lives of millions, that he is always in an unhealthy state, and always suffers more or less from a mania of self-aggrandizement.”
The importance of action
If Dostoevsky would insist that one not look away, it is fair to say that Tolstoy would contend that people must act upon what they see.
During the Russian famine of 1891 to 1892, he started soup kitchens to help his countrymen who were starving and had been abandoned by the Russian government. He worked to help Russian soldiers evade the draft in the Russian empire, visiting and supporting jailed soldiers who did not wish to fight. In 1899 he sold his last novel, “Resurrection,” to help a Russian Christian sect, the Doukhobors, emigrate to Canada so they would not need to fight in the Russian army.
These writers have little to do with the current war. They cannot expunge or mitigate the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. But they’re embedded on some level within the Russian cultural fabric, and how their books are still read matters. Not because Russian literature can explain any of what is happening, because it cannot. But because, as Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan wrote in March 2022, Russia’s war in Ukraine marked a defeat for Russia’s great humanist tradition.
As this culture copes with a Russian army that has indiscriminately bombed and massacred Ukrainians, Russia’s great authors can and should be read critically, with one urgent question in mind: how to stop the violence. Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny noted during his March 2022 trial that Tolstoy urged his countrymen to fight both despotism and war because one enables the other.
And Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze cited “War and Peace” in a February 2022 entry in her graphic diary.
“I’ve read your f—ing literature,” she wrote. “But looks like Putin did not, and you have forgotten.”
In face of the “escalating climate emergency,” the advocacy group Scientist Rebellion warns that IPCC summary to global policymakers remains “alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative.”
Amid a weeklong global civil disobedience campaign to demand climate action commensurate with mounting evidence about the need for swift decarbonization, Scientist Rebellion is highlighting specific gaps between what experts say is necessary and what governments allowed to be published in a summary of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment.
“We need a billion climate activists…The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”
The landmark report on mitigation by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—part of the U.N.’s sixth comprehensive climate assessment since 1992 and possibly the last to be published with enough time to avert the most catastrophic consequences of the planetary crisis—was compiled by 278 researchers from 65 countries.
The authors, who synthesized thousands of peer-reviewed studies published in the past several years, make clear over the course of nearly 3,000 pages that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”
Meanwhile, a 64-page Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report—a key reference point for governments—required the approval of all 195 member states of the IPCC and was edited with their input.
Following a contentious weekend of negotiations in which wealthy governments attempted to weaken statements about green financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing countries objected to unequivocal language about the need to quickly eliminate coal, oil, and gas extraction, the IPCC document was published several hours later than expected on Monday.
“Despite the escalating climate emergency and the total absence of emissions cuts, the framing of the final version of the SPM is still alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative,” Scientist Rebellion, an international alliance of academics who are advocating for systemic political and economic changes in line with scientific findings, said Tuesday in a statement.
“The science has never been clearer: to have any chance of retaining a habitable planet, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut radically now,” the group continued. “Limiting warming to 1.5°C and responding to the climate emergency requires an immediate transformation across all sectors and strata of society, a mobilization of historic proportions: a climate revolution.”
“The IPCC [has] avoided naming the major culprits for 30 years, which is one reason for the absence of real emissions cuts,” the group added. “Facts detailing the complicity of the world’s richest countries in fueling the climate crisis have been watered down by the IPCC’s political review process.”
Scientist Rebellion proceeded to contrast the final version of the SPM—”the document that garners almost all attention”—to an early draft of a summary of the Working Group III report on mitigation that IPCC authors associated with the group leaked last August out of concern that their conclusions would be diluted by policymakers.
Peter Kalmus, a Los Angeles-based climate scientist and author who is participating in this week’s direct actions, told Common Dreams that the shortcomings of governments and policymakers have driven him to act.
Kalmus said he was willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest this week, “because I’ve tried everything else I can think of over the past decade and nothing has worked. I see humanity heading directly toward climate disaster.”
With humanity “currently on track to lose everything we love,” he said, the scientific community must intensify its efforts.
“If we don’t rapidly end the fossil fuel industry and begin acting like Earth breakdown is an emergency, we risk civilizational collapse and potentially the death of billions, not to mention the loss of major critical ecosystems around the world,” said Kalmus. “This is so much bigger than me. Expect climate scientists to be taking such actions repeatedly in the future and in large numbers.”
On Wednesday, direct actions by scientists took place in Berlin, Germany; The Hague, Netherlands; Bogata, Colombia, and other cities.
In its Tuesday assessment, Scientist Rebellion documented how the political review process weakened or eliminated language about carbon inequality and the need for far-reaching socio-economic transformation to slash greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the final SPM:
Example 1: Section B6 of the report originally stated that “institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future GHG emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate.” This has been replaced with “global GHG emissions in 2030 associated with the implementation of nationally determined contributions… would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century.” The final version also no longer mentions that “vested interests” and a focus on an “incremental rather than a systemic approach” are limiting factors to ambitious transformation.
Example 2: The leaked SPM stated that “within countries, inequalities increased for both income and GHG emissions between 1970 and 2016, with the top 1% accounting for 27% of income growth,” and that “top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of GHG emissions from aviation.” Neither statement appears in the final version.
“While the SPM—being approved line-by-line by all governments—is reserved, docile, and conservative, the situation is clear,” said Scientist Rebellion.
The group went on to quote U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster.”
Limiting global heating to the boundaries set out under the Paris Agreement now requires an immediate shift into emergency mode, a transformation across all sectors and stratas of society, a mobilization of historic proportions — in short, a climate revolution. #ClimateCrisis 2/2 pic.twitter.com/wxvNBUee2q
— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) April 5, 2022
As Common Dreamsreported Monday, more than 1,000 scientists in at least 25 countries on every continent in the world are expected to participate in strikes, occupations, and other actions this week to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis,” and several demonstrations are already underway.
Guterres, for his part, said Monday that “climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
For his part, Kalmus acknowledged it was going to take much more than a series of direct actions by scientists to turn the tide against inaction.
“We need a billion climate activists,” Kalmus said. “I encourage everyone to consider where we’re heading as a species, and to engage in civil disobedience and other actions. The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”
“Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize,” he said, “before we lose everything.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.
CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.
As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.
How does CDR work?
CDR is distinct from “carbon capture”, which involves catching CO₂ at the source, such as a coal-fired power plant or steel mill, before it reaches the atmosphere.
There are several ways to remove CO₂ from the air. They include:
terrestrial solutions, such as planting trees and adopting regenerative soil practices, such as low or no-till agriculture and cover cropping, which limit soil disturbances that can oxidise soil carbon and release CO₂.
geochemical approaches that store CO₂ as a solid mineral carbonate in rocks. In a process known as “enhanced mineral weathering”, rocks such as limestone and olivine can be finely ground to increase their surface area and enhance a naturally occurring process whereby minerals rich in calcium and magnesium react with CO₂ to form a stable mineral carbonate.
chemical solutions such as direct air capture that use engineered filters to remove CO₂ molecules from air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground into saline aquifers and basaltic rock formations for durable sequestration.
ocean-based solutions, such as enhanced alkalinity. This involves directly adding alkaline materials to the environment, or electrochemically processing seawater. But these methods need to be further researched before being deployed.
Where is it being used right now?
To date, US-based company Charm Industrial has delivered 5,000 tonnes of CDR, which is the the largest volume thus far. This is equivalent to the emissions produced by about 1,000 cars in a year.
There are also several plans for larger-scale direct air capture facilities. In September, 2021, Climeworks opened a facility in Iceland with a 4,000 tonne per annum capacity for CO₂ removal. And in the US, the Biden Administration has allocated US$3.5 billion to build four separate direct air capture hubs, each with the capacity to remove at least one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.
However, a previous IPCC report estimated that to limit global warming to 1.5℃, between 100 billion and one trillion tonnes of CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere this century. So while these projects represent a massive scale-up, they are still a drop in the ocean compared with what is required.
In Australia, Southern Green Gas and Corporate Carbon are developing one of the country’s first direct air capture projects. This is being done in conjunction with University of Sydney researchers, ourselves included.
In this system, fans push atmospheric air over finely tuned filters made from molecular adsorbents, which can remove CO₂ molecules from the air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground, where it can remain for thousands of years.
Opportunities
It is important to stress CDR is not a replacement for emissions reductions. However, it can supplement these efforts. The IPCC has outlined three ways this might be done.
In the short term, CDR could help reduce net CO₂ emissions. This is crucial if we are to limit warming below critical temperature thresholds.
In the medium term, it could help balance out emissions from sectors such as agriculture, aviation, shipping and industrial manufacturing, where straightforward zero-emission alternatives don’t yet exist.
In the long term, CDR could potentially remove large amounts of historical emissions, stabilising atmospheric CO₂ and eventually bringing it back down to pre-industrial levels.
The IPCC’s latest report has estimated the technological readiness levels, costs, scale-up potential, risk and impacts, co-benefits and trade-offs for 12 different forms of CDR. This provides an updated perspective on several forms of CDR that were lesser explored in previous reports.
It estimates each tonne of CO₂ retrieved through direct air capture will cost US$84–386, and that there is the feasible potential to remove between 5 billion and 40 billion tonnes annually.
Concerns and challenges
Each CDR method is complex and unique, and no solution is perfect. As deployment grows, a number of concerns must be addressed.
First, the IPCC notes scaling up CDR must not detract from efforts to dramatically reduce emissions. They write that “CDR cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions but can fulfil multiple complementary roles”.
If not done properly, CDR projects could potentially compete with agriculture for land or introduce non-native plants and trees. As the IPCC notes, care must be taken to ensure the technology does not negatively affect biodiversity, land-use or food security.
The IPCC also notes some CDR methods are energy-intensive, or could consume renewable energy needed to decarbonise other activities.
It expressed concern CDR might also exacerbate water scarcity and make Earth reflect less sunlight, such as in cases of large-scale reforestation.
Given the portfolio of required solutions, each form of CDR might work best in different locations. So being thoughtful about placement can ensure crops and trees are planted where they won’t dramatically alter the Earth’s reflectivity, or use too much water.
Direct air capture systems can be placed in remote locations that have easy access to off-grid renewable energy, and where they won’t compete with agriculture or forests.
Finally, deploying long-duration CDR solutions can be quite expensive – far more so than short-duration solutions such as planting trees and altering soil. This has hampered CDR’s commercial viability thus far.
But costs are likely to decline, as they have for many other technologies including solar, wind and lithium-ion batteries. The trajectory at which CDR costs decline will vary between the technologies.
Future efforts
Looking forward, the IPCC recommends accelerated research, development and demonstration, and targeted incentives to increase the scale of CDR projects. It also emphasises the need for improved measurement, reporting and verification methods for carbon storage.
More work is needed to ensure CDR projects are deployed responsibly. CDR deployment must involve communities, policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs to ensure it’s done in an environmentally, ethically and socially responsible way.
Since it was first published in English in 1927, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has proved to be the most popular book on Tibetan Buddhism in the Western world. At present, there are at least 21 translations in multiple languages and formats. There are also multiple expert commentaries, ranging from scholarly discussions to Buddhist practice guides.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an exemplar of Tibetan literary prose and a compelling commentary on the universal experience of death and dying from a Buddhist perspective. A classic of medieval Buddhist literature, it contains vivid descriptions of the bardos or intermediary states between death and rebirth that are, like other medieval texts, often illustrated.
The most important thing to understand about The Tibetan Book of the Dead is that it is meant to be read aloud. This is not surprising when we consider that ancient texts from many cultures were meant to be recited. Reading silently was uncommon in the ancient world.
Not only is The Tibetan Book of the Dead meant to be read aloud, it is meant to be read to the dead. In other words, corpses are the intended audience for the work, which makes it unique among the world’s literary classics. Its opening lines speak directly to the deceased:
O, Alas! Alas! Fortunate Child of Buddha Nature, Do not be oppressed by the forces of ignorance and delusion! But rise up now with resolve and courage! Entranced by ignorance from beginningless time until now, You have had more than enough time to sleep. So do not slumber any longer, but strive after virtue with body, speech and mind!
In this opening passage, we encounter the book’s fundamental messages. The first and perhaps most important message is that all beings are, in their fundamental nature, no different to the Buddha – sublime and perfect. This means that we can all become enlightened, just as the Buddha was enlightened. The next message is that a subtle, pared-back form of consciousness remains alert in the corpse for some time after death, existing in what is known as a bardo, an intermediate state of existence between death and rebirth.
A bardo is a mind-state rather than a place, a transitional state that is neither here nor there, not of this life but also not of the next. Etymologically, the word bardo breaks down into “bar”, which translates as movement or flow, like a stream, and “do” which translates as a stepping stone or island in the stream.
The idea of an island of stillness within a stream of movement is profoundly important in the Buddhist teachings, because it points to the hidden profundity of present experience, to the immediacy that is being in the now, which can open us to a direct and intimate experience of what Tibetan Buddhists call our true nature, or Buddha Nature.
An island of stillness within a stream of movement. Shutterstock
The cycle of life
The final message of the lines quoted above is that physical death is not an ultimate end or oblivion. Indeed, it may be an opportunity. Even in the disembodied, post-mortem state of the bardo, there is still a chance for what Buddhists call Nirvana or liberation, which is freedom from the tyranny of cyclic existence.
Cyclic existence is birth, suffering, death, then rebirth into another life of suffering and death, on and on without end. Buddhists believe that we have all been trapped in this cycle of misery since the beginning of time and will remain trapped forever unless we do something about it.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us what to do about it. It tells us how to achieve liberation in the moment of death and fulfil our potential as spiritually awakened beings, as Buddhas. This profoundly appealing promise is at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about life and death.
Origins
As a book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has a mystical origin story and a publication history unlike any other. According to Tibetan tradition it was created in the 8th century (around 750 CE) by Padmasambhava, a mystic and prophet from Oddiyana, in what is now far northern Pakistan, who established tantric Buddhism in the Tibetan Empire.
Padmasambhava did not write or compose the text, but rather spontaneously dictated it to Yeshe Tsogyal, a Tibetan princess, who was his most important disciple and the first Tibetan to achieve enlightenment. Yeshe Tsogyal is one of the few women in recorded history to be venerated as a fully awakened Buddha.
Padmasambhava told his exceptional disciple that the book’s message was not for that time, but for some future time, so Yeshe Tsogyal hid the text in a cave high on a mountain in central Tibet. Padmasambhava then prophesised that the text would be rediscovered more than 500 years later, when it would be needed by the people of Tibet and the world.
Exactly as prophesised, around 1341, when the bubonic plague was cutting down millions in Europe and Asia, a spiritually precocious 15-year-old boy, following instructions he had received in dreams and visions, climbed the mountain, entered the cave, and found the text.
The boy was Karma Lingpa, from then on renowned as a saint and visionary and the prophesied terton, or “treasure-revealer”, of the spiritual treasure that is The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The text was copied and distributed throughout Tibet and the lands where tantric Buddhism flourished – Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, Sikkim, Mongolia and China. It became one of the most treasured texts of Tibetan Buddhism.
If we accept the traditional version of events, The Tibetan Book of the Dead was created centuries before the epic poem Beowulf was composed in England, but was not made public or widely distributed until around the time when Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales. This has to be one of the longest publishing schedules in history, spanning nearly 600 years. True or not, the origin story adds to the book’s mystique.
The universality of death
The publication date for The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 1341 CE or thereabouts, gives us the historical context for the work’s appeal. The perilous time in which it was disseminated, at the height of the Black Death in Asia and Europe, meant that its unique vision of death as an opportunity for enlightenment resonated with a terrified population.
Its emergence or rediscovery at the time of the bubonic plague, and the Buddhist promise it holds of liberation from the cycle of rebirth and suffering, made it the most sought after text in the medieval Buddhist world. Its depiction of death and dying offered guidance in a time when human beings felt under siege by plague and conflict.
Of course, death is not just a medieval concern. All beings die and all beings grieve, human and non-human animals alike, so death both fascinates and terrifies. Although the Black Death no longer stalks the world, other plagues and pandemics have emerged with unsettling frequency: cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, tuberculosis, influenza, AIDS and COVID 19.
There are always wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, accidents and other calamities. Death is our shadow. It darkens our steps from the minute we are born and endures after our life is lost, casting a pall of grief over those we have left behind. The Tibetan Book of the Dead became and remains the most well-known book about Buddhism in the Western world because it deals with the only topic common to us all: the inevitability of death and our need to psychologically or spiritually process that truth.
Translation and reception in the West
The story behind The Tibetan Book of the Dead’s translation and publication in the West is almost as unusual as its origin story. The book was first published in English in 1927. In Tibetan the title is Bardo Thodol, which does not translate as The Tibetan Book of the Dead at all, but as “Liberation through Hearing during the Intermediate State”.
The English title was thought up by Walter Evans-Wentz (1878–1965) as a nod to The Egyptian Book of the Dead, a popular book among spiritualists at the time. Wentz, a theosophist determined to link the Tibetan text to his own fanciful spiritualist philosophy, was credited as the translator of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but he did not actually do the translating. The translation was done by Kazi Dawa Samdup (1868–1922), the headmaster of a boarding school in the Sikkimese capital of Gangtok and a one-time interpreter for the British Raj.
Wentz not only took credit for the translation; he altered it in such fundamental ways that it was no longer a translation at all, but a kind of literary fabrication that distorted the book’s Buddhist messages to conform to his own cooked-up spiritualist ideas. As a result, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, in that first edition produced by Wentz, was a kind of psychedelic travelogue of an afterlife that Buddhists do not believe in.
The spiritualist and quasi-psychedelic threads Wentz introduced are among the main reasons the book became popular among Western spiritualists of the 1930s and 1940s, some of whom later introduced it into the American counterculture of the 1960s.
In 1964, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead was published, solidifying the link between the text and altered or psychedelic states of consciousness. Authored by notorious psychologists and psychedelics “researchers” Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert (later the Hindu guru Ram Dass), the work takes Wentz’s fabrications and runs wild with them.
The link to psychedelic drugs and spooky spiritualism contributes to The Tibetan Book of the Dead’s ongoing appeal to a certain alternative Western non-Buddhist reader. However, this does not wholly explain its enduring popularity. More recent translations are true translations, rather than spiritualist fabrications or psychedelic imaginings. This has done nothing to reduce the book’s popularity. And it brings us to the real reason it is still one of the bestselling books about Tibetan Buddhism – its vision of what happens to us after death.
This vision resonates with Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, because it provides a philosophy about life and death that addresses both our fascination with and fear of death. It treats death not as a final end, but as an opportunity to become more than we are, to become what we are in our fundamental nature, which, according to Buddhism, is perfect and at one with everything.
This satisfies two very human needs: the need to process the truth of death, and the need for our short and often limited lives to have meaning beyond mere survival or biological reproduction.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or rather the Bardo Thodol, shows us how to achieve both. Whether we believe in Buddhist notions of rebirth and cyclic existence or not, the message this text contains is unique, which is why it has become a classic of world literature and will likely remain one.
“Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street,” said Lukas Ross at Friends of the Earth.
An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.
“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”
The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”
“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”
“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.
During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”
The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”
“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.
“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”
Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”
“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.
NEW TODAY: Big Oil is cashing in on a wartime bonus. They’re exploiting surging crude oil prices, a humanitarian disaster in Europe, and consumer pain at the pump. It needs to stop.
As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”
Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.
“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”
According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”
“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”
The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.
Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.
“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”
“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Below we’ve embedded the new video, along with the text of the video.
Your life could get a lot more dangerous. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court seem poised to strip away basic safety standards for our workplaces, our food, our air and water.
Congress gives federal agencies the authority to enact regulations that protect us in our daily lives. Congress defines the goals, but leaves it up to the health and safety experts in those agencies to craft and enforce regulations. I know regulations don’t sound very exciting, but they’re how our government keeps us safe.
Remember when lots of romaine lettuce was recalled because it was causing E.coli outbreaks? That was the Food and Drug Administration protecting us from getting sick. Working in a warehouse? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets standards to ensure you don’t breathe in dangerous chemicals like asbestos. Enjoying the fresh air on a clear, sunny day? Thank the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting the amount of pollution that can go into our air.
These agencies save lives. Since OSHA was established a half-century ago, its workplace safety regulations have saved more than 618,000 workers’ lives.
Republicans have been trying to gut these agencies for decades. Now, with the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority solidly in place, they have their best chance yet.
The Court claimed that Covid isn’t an “occupational hazard” because people can become infected outside of work, and that allowing OSHA to regulate in this manner “would significantly expand” its authority without clear Congressional authorization.
This is absurd on its face. Section 2 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 clearly spells out OSHA’s authority to enact and enforce regulations that protect workers from illness, injury, and death in the workplace. Congress doesn’t need to list every specific workplace hazard before OSHA can protect workers.
What this ruling tells us is that the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are intent on gutting the power of agencies to issue regulations.
This term, the Court will also hear a case regarding the EPA’s authority to enforce the Clean Water Act. If the Court undermines the EPA’s authority, it will put our environment – and our health – at risk. Remember when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire because it was brimming with oil, acid, and factory chemicals? That’s what we may be returning to.
And what’s next? Will they gut the Federal Trade Commission and put us all at risk of being defrauded? Target the Securities and Exchange Commission and deregulate the financial sector, sparking another financial crisis?
Beware. If Republican appointees on the Supreme Court succeed in gutting regulatory agencies, we all lose. This agenda is anti-worker, anti-consumer, and anti-environment. The only thing it’s good for is corporate profits.
Around the world, revolutionary changes are under way in transportation. More electric vehicles are on the road, people are taking advantage of sharing mobility services such as Uber and Lyft, and the rise in telework during the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way people think about commuting.
The systemic changes under way in the transportation sector could begin lowering that emissions footprint. But will they reduce emissions enough?
In a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released April 4, 2022, scientists examined the latest research on efforts to mitigate climate change. The report concludes that falling costs for renewable energy and electric vehicle batteries, in addition to policy changes, have slowed the growth of climate change in the past decade, but that deep, immediate cuts are necessary. Emissions will have to peak by 2025 to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F), a Paris Agreement goal, the report says.
Costs are falling for key forms of renewable energy and EV batteries, and adoption of these technologies is rising. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
The transportation chapter, which I contributed to, homed in on transportation transformations – some just starting and others expanding – that in the most aggressive scenarios could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 80% to 90% of current levels by 2050. That sort of drastic reduction would require a major, rapid rethinking of how people get around globally.
The future of EVs
All-electric vehicles have grown dramatically since the Tesla Roadster and Nissan Leaf arrived on the market a little over a decade ago, following the popularity of hybrids.
In 2021 alone, the sales of electric passenger vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, doubled worldwide to 6.6 million, about 9% of all car sales that year.
Pickups, Vans and SUVs, which typically have much lower gas mileage than cars, make up the majority of new car sales in the U.S. Electric versions could be game-changers for emissions.
Beyond passenger vehicles, many micro-mobility options – such as autorickshaws, scooters and bikes – as well as buses, have been electrified. As the cost of lithium-ion batteries decreases, these transportation options will become increasingly affordable and further boost sales of battery-powered vehicles that traditionally have run on fossil fuels.
With the global trends toward more renewable generation, these vehicles will be connected with fewer carbon emissions over time. There are also many developing and potentially promising co-benefits of electromobility when coupled with the power system. The batteries within electric vehicles have the potential to act as storage devices for the grid, which can assist in stabilizing the intermittency of renewable resources in the power sector, among many other benefits.
Other areas of transportation are more challenging to electrify. Larger and heavier vehicles generally aren’t as conducive to electrification because the size and weight of the batteries needed rapidly becomes untenable.
For some heavy-duty trucks, ships and airplanes, alternative fuels such as hydrogen, advanced biofuels and synthetic fuels are being explored as replacements for fossil fuels. Most aren’t economically feasible yet, and substantial advances in the technology are still needed to ensure they are either low- or zero-carbon.
Other ways to cut emissions from transportation
While new fuel and vehicle technologies are often highlighted as decarbonization solutions, behavioral and other systemic changes will also be needed to meet to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically from this sector. We are already in the midst of these changes.
Telecommuting: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the explosion of teleworking and video conferencing reduced travel, and, with it, emissions associated with commuting. While some of that will rebound, telework is likely to continue for many sectors of the economy.
Shared mobility: Some shared mobility options, like bike and scooter sharing programs, can get more people out of vehicles entirely.
Car-sharing and on-demand services such as Uber and Lyft also have the potential to reduce emissions if they use high-efficiency or zero-emission vehicles, or if their services lean more toward car pooling, with each driver picking up multiple passengers. Unfortunately, there is substantial uncertainty about the impact of these services. They might also increase vehicle use and, with it, greenhouse gas emissions.
New policies such as the California Clean Miles Standard are helping to push companies like Uber and Lyft to use cleaner vehicles and increase their passenger loads, though it remains to be seen whether other regions will adopt similar policies.
Public transit-friendly cities: Another systemic change involves urban planning and design. Transportation in urban areas is responsible for approximately 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Efficient city planning and land use can reduce travel demand and shift transportation modes, from cars to public transit, through strategies that avoid urban sprawl and disincentivize personal cars. These improvements not only decrease greenhouse gas emissions, but can decrease congestion, air pollution and noise, while improving the safety of transportation systems.
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How do these advances translate to lower emissions?
Much of the uncertainty in how much technological change and other systemic shifts in transportation affects global warming is related to the speed of transition.
The new IPCC report includes several potential scenarios for how much improvements in transportation will be able to cut emissions. On average, the scenarios indicate that the carbon intensity of the transportation sector would need to decrease by about 50% by 2050 and as much as 91% by 2100 when combined with a cleaner electricity grid to stay within the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) target for global warming.
These decreases would require a complete reversal of current trends of increasing emissions in the transportation sector, but the recent advances in transportation provide many opportunities to meet this challenge.
Russian intelligence chief Sergey Beseda and his deputy, Anatoly Bolyukh, were placed under house arrest on March 9. Beseda and Bolyukh oversaw the foreign intelligence branch of the FSB, which is the Russian security service. They were allegedly the main proponents of the assumption that Ukraine would swiftly collapse, which has proved deeply flawed.
But, as has become increasingly clear over many years, Vladimir Putin has become intolerant of opinions that contradict his preferred course of action. So although the intelligence was flawed, Beseda’s claims likely manipulated facts to fit what the Russian president wanted to believe. Having led the foreign intelligence branch since 2009, it is likely Beseda knew what his boss wanted to hear. Yet both he and Bolyukh have taken the blame for the wider invasion failure.
Putin has been living in a virtual bunker. The presidential administration, his primary information source, is a secretive organisation and has been feeding Putin a controlled information flow for over a decade. The institution acts as a gatekeeper to Putin and blocks non-positive intelligence from reaching him.
This twisting of facts to fit a particular worldview is only part of the problem. Another factor is that the different security services compete and undertake their own projects in the hope that this pleases Putin.
The Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB) or Federal Security Service, is one of many agencies. While the FSB is commonly thought of as a domestic intelligence agency, it also operates in other post-Soviet countries, except the Baltic states. Meanwhile the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedkiis (SVR), or Foreign Intelligence Service is involved in foreign intelligence gathering outside the post-Soviet space. The Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany (FSO), or Federal Protective Service, protects high-ranking officials. The Glavnoye upravleniye (GU), or Main Directorate – previously the GRU – is military intelligence.
The Rosgvardiya, or National Guard, which was created in 2016, is not strictly an intelligence agency but is effectively Putin’s praetorian guard. It is increasingly involved in external operations and has a direct line to Putin through its chief, Viktor Zolotov. He was Putin’s personal bodyguard from 2000 to 2013 before becoming minister of internal affairs and head of the internal troops from 2014 to 2016.
Spy v spy
Ostensibly the different Russian security services are like their western counterparts. But the FSB in particular is more carnivorous than its western equivalents, having largely consumed the signal-intelligence service, FAPSI. Putin as a former KGB Officer himself views them as crucial to his personal survival and making Russia great again. In 2020 Russia spent 5.5 trillion roubles (US$69 billion) on the security services. This amounts to 28% of the annual budget or 3.5 times the amount spent on health and education combined.
This comes at a price, though, with Putin demanding results. Each service is aware that they need to come up with the scariest crisis – or intelligence that fits Putin’s worldview – to increase their budget and influence. One example of this scare tactic was FSB chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov, claiming that the 2012 Siberian forest fires were the work of al-Qaeda. Scare tactics and only providing positive information to Putin results in a lack of coherence.
Each security service jealously guards its own territory and views the others with suspicion. This makes working together for a common good difficult. This rivalry is intense, and is built on a combination of mistrust and wanting Putin’s attention. In particular, the FSB appears to have the highest level of mistrust for other services and is constantly sniping at them. Competition also occurs at the intra-service level, with different groups conducting their own policies sometimes to the detriment of the agenda of their own branch.
All this makes for a very confusing picture, which is likely by design. By having inter and intra-service rivalries, the security services are too focused on their own jealousies, rather than other issues. With the war not going to plan there have also been murmurings that some security personnel are considering a coup.
Isolated and out of touch
Increasingly Putin’s inner circle is getting smaller and there is a growing level of mistrust and discontentment both by and against Putin. Rosgvardiya deputy Roman Gavrilov resigned in March over alleged claims of leaking information. Like Zolotov, Gavrilov was part of Putin’s personal bodyguard and when Zolotov tried to intervene, Putin refused to see him.
In the past month, eight generals have allegedly been sacked, in another sign that Putin is growing more isolated. His rambling speech and potted history in the build-up to recognising the independence of the two Donbas people’s republics were from someone who appears increasingly out of touch.
Since the pandemic’s start, Putin was isolated in a bunker with disinfection tunnels and largely sequestered from face-to-face meetings. The March 18 rally at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium is one of many pointers that Putin remains in – or very close to – a bunker, only appearing for crucial meetings.
The long table in the Kremlin is another sign that Putin fears face-to-face meetings. For years, he has had food tasters. This creates a certain paranoia and the Ukraine conflict – and before it the pandemic – has turbocharged it.
Putin has long believed he is the most informed politician in the world. But this simply is not the case. Like the emperor with no clothes, Putin suffers from a warped reality where only positive information is allowed. This is what makes the current Ukrainian conflict particularly dangerous.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are scheduled to vote April 4, 2022, on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination for the Supreme Court. It kicks off a potentially historic week in which a full Senate vote could set course for the nation’s highest court seating it’s first Black female judge.
The elevation of Jackson to the Supreme Court would not change the ideological setup of the bench – which would continue to be split 6-3 in favor of conservative justices.
Nonetheless, it would be an important landmark in the history of the Court – of the 115 justices on the Supreme Court since it was established in 1789, 108 have been white men.
Race featured in Jackson’s confirmation process; so too attempts to define her “judicial philosophy.” The Conversation has turned to legal scholars to explain the meaning of Jackson’s potential ascension to the court.
On the shoulders of pioneers
Jackson, if she wins confirmation at the next stage, a vote by the full Senate, will have broken through the ultimate glass ceiling in terms of legal careers. She would have done so on the shoulders of pioneering Black female judges.
University of Florida’s Sharon D. Wright Austin notes, even now, “relatively few Black women are judges at the state or federal level” – which makes the achievement of those who have made it to this level all the more remarkable.
Of the judges highlighted by Austin, there is Judge Jane Bolin, who became the country’s first Black female judge in 1939, serving as a domestic relations court judge in New York for almost four decades. Later, in 1961, Constance Baker Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In all she argued 10 cases before the Court, winning nine of them. Meanwhile, Judge Julia Cooper Mack is noted as the first Black woman to sit on a federal appellate court, being appointed in 1975 and serving 14 years on the bench.
These women are to be celebrated and remembered. As Wright Austin writes: “Representation matters: It is easier for young girls of color to aspire to reach their highest goals when they see others who have done so before them, in the same way that women like Jane Bolin, Constance Baker Motley and Julia Cooper Mack encouraged Ketanji Brown Jackson to reach hers.
Echoes of the past
The fact that a Black female Supreme Court justice is long overdue is testament to the slow progress the U.S. has made toward racial – and gender – equality.
Questions directed at the would-be Supreme Court justice were, according to Russell, tantamount to race-baiting. They also sounded eerily similar to criticisms that then-Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American nominee to the court, faced in his own confirmation hearings in 1967.
Both Jackson now, and Marshall then, stood accused by senators of being soft on crime and were asked about how they intended to bring race into their legal decisions. “Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?” Marshall was asked by a known white supremacist senator. Similarly, Jackson was asked during her confirmation hearings if she had a “hidden agenda” to incorporate critical race theory, which holds that racism is structural in nature rather than expressed solely through personal bias, into the legal system.
“I find it striking,” Russell writes, “that race has surfaced in such a major way in these hearings, more than five decades after Marshall’s nomination. In some respects, there has been progress on racial equity in the U.S., but aspects of these hearings demonstrate that too much remains the same.”
What Jackson would bring to the Supreme Court
Jackson’s potentially historic achievement of becoming the first Black female Supreme Court justice may distract from the fact she is also eminently qualified to sit on the highest court in her own rights.
Alexis Karteron of Rutgers University-Newark notes that the Harvard law-trained Jackson went on to clerk for Stephen Breyer, the retiring justice she is set to replace. She has served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission as well as acting as both a trial court and appellate judge.
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Jackson is also the first former criminal defense attorney to be nominated to the Supreme Court since Marshall. This puts Jackson in a unique position on the bench. Karteron writes that having served as a public defender “will help [Jackson] understand the very real human toll of our criminal justice system. … The criminal justice system takes an enormous toll on both the people in the system and their loved ones. I believe having a Supreme Court justice who is familiar with that is incredibly valuable.”
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