Tag Archives: Breaking News

Apps, Elon Musk, Social Media, Twitter

New Elon Musk tweets Confirm he will not be a Silent Stakeholder: Board Seat Declined

In another weekend explosion, this time, revealing the hands on bent of ideas for TWX project

Once again the weekend is seeing a barrage of tweets from Elon Musk, this time with a solid bulls-eye on Twitter itself and changes he has on his wishlist. Implementation schedule appears to be, well, immediate.

https://bookshop.org/a/565/9780553418835

The first tweet we are featuring was a preview of just how much of an activist shareholder he is planning to be.

Looking forward to the first board meeting he will attend since his $2.9 billion 9.2% stake in the bird platform – Musk reposted a meme of his infamous “Ganja weed” interview – essentially creating an instant meme of memes:

**note – on Sunday night (April 10th, 2022) it was revealed that Elon Musk joining the board would not be a thing, after all. Most likely reason sited in the avalanche of reactions? A board seat would have capped the maximum investment / stake percentage at 14.9% and brought potentail legal issues. As the largest shareholder the door remains open to his acquiring the company outright, and continuing the activist direction clearly indicated in the tweets below…

Next, the constructive criticism started, first taking note (perhaps already up his sleeve as he contemplated shelling out 3 bil of pocket change) of how many of the accounts with the most followers post “very little content”. Summing up his thoughts with the question “Is Twitter dying?”

Next, in replies to himself he got granular, citing two very specific examples, how @taylorswift13 and @justinbieber are remiss when it comes to staying active and tweeting on a regular basis…

Apparently, the day was just beginning to get interesting, cause he posted a Yogi Berra-like conundrum next, pointing out that statistics, including this very one, presumably, are very often false. Posted at 1:14 PM he may have had a siesta and found himself ready to rumble cause with the next tweet at 5:03 PM things started to cook…

He dug into his infographic trove of insights and pulled out this re-tweeted gem, showing how the Weather Channel is distrusted by nearly 50% of Republicans and about 35% percent of Democrats.

This tweet is an interesting one as there has been a lot of hand wringing and dire predictions made in the “media” that Elon Musk, known as having a Libertarian prediliction, will somehow be Trump’s savior and that his idea of “free speech” is similar to those that are somewhere to the Right of Q-anon.

This, I would venture, is highly unlikely. It’s far more likely that his idea of free speech might actually be closer to, well what it sounds like, less censorship. Oddly both the left and the right are anticipating disappointment, and perhaps, that is one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for things.

The tweets of April 9th, seem to bear out the idea that he will be active, vocal and, above all, amusing, but unlikely to follow any faction or party.

Next came more specific and sort of practical tweets, like this one suggesting twitter “sell” the authentication checkmark as part of the Twitter Blue $3 subscription package. This, bizarrely, is a great business concept, and might actually happen, crazy as it sounds.

After reflecting briefly on the idea, it became clear that the invention of a new plebian version of the coveted mark is needed, lest it be confused with the rare and hard to acquire “public figure” or “official” accounts.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512957577092608004?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

A quick followup tweet with self replies included the observation that the edit tweet feature that has had much action this week is already a done deal in the future paid Twitter landscape.

Then, as if out of the blue like a bolt of lightening Elon decides that there should be no ads! Ok, so this does make sense in a genius billionaire kind-of-way here’s the new breakdown:

  1. Everybody pays $3 per moth
  2. Advertising is cancelled
  3. We all get checkmarks and an edit tweet feature
  4. Corporations stop “dictating policy”
  5. Twitter SF HQ is converted into a homeless shelter (unhoused refuge)
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512962115270754306?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

Good idea?:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512966135423066116?s=21&t=p5FTMofYfTHgM4X5Gm2n8Q

Then, in a semi-final, inspired burst of sunshine, there’s a great suggestion – actually a tweet from earlier in the am – 7:39 to be exact but pinned for now, the man who must be heeded points out that “crypto scam accounts” represent a large percentage that should be subtracted from the real accounts. ow if they can just remove the 3 billion fake accounts across all social media…

Apparently not able to quit while ahead, or maybe under the influence of jet lag or substances, this gem dropped:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1513045405029711878?s=21&t=Rw_ry5HVOGgsmXRxJJzSbA

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News, Observation, Politics

Airbnb’s Ukraine moment is a reminder of what the sharing economy can be

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.

Uber, for example, has squeezed taxi cooperatives, reduced wages for drivers and normalised precarious “gig work”. Airbnb has been criticised for contributing to rental affordability and supply problems, as property owners chase higher returns from the short-stay market.

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.

Daiane Scaraboto, Associate Professor of Marketing, The University of Melbourne and Bernardo Figueiredo, Associate Professor of Marketing, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Apps, News, Tech

More Than 50 U.S. Gig Workers Murdered on the Job in Five Years

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

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.”

This article was originally published on The Markup By: Dara Kerr and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Breaking News, News, Politics

Trump Interview touches Ivanka, Jan. 6th Regrets and More

In new interview with The Washington Post today, ‘former guy’ Donald Trump ramped up his replies like someone about to run for re-election.

He commented on the fact that his daughter, Ivanka, was interviewed by the January 6th committee for eight hours this week and declared that this was a “shame and harassment”, while also stating that he did not know what she had or hadn’t divulged to the members of the committee.

Trump also said that he did not know what Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, had said to the committee, but that he had offered both Ivanka and Jared “privilege” if they wanted it. Both of them declined, according to Trump.

Regarding the now ‘infamous’ 7 hour and 37 minute gap in the call logs for then President Trump on January 6th , which took place precisely as the Capitol building was being violently assaulted by his followers, Trump claimed that he had not destroyed any logs from that day and that he did not make any calls on any “burner phones”.

While claiming that he has a “very good” memory, he also stated that he was unable to recall who he had talked to during the time of the gap on January 6th.

“From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many” he said, adding subsequently, “Why would I care about who called me? There was nothing sensitive about it. There was no secret”.

Plotting or plodding, the announcement to run still unspecified

Overall the interview comes across as guarded, if Trump’s loose cannon style could ever be described that way.

Many of the topics, other than the comments on the January 6th committee above, were variations on themes Trump has used while he waits to officially declare (or not) for the 2024 Presidential race.

Mentioning the previous comments he had made regarding his health being a factor in his decision to run (or not) in 2024, Tump said that, while that was a consideration, he was currently in good health and then elaborated:

“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again. That’s not good when they use the word again,”

Continuing his now trademarked tease regarding the official decision to run he then closed with:

“I don’t want to comment on running, but I think a lot of people are going to be very happy by my decision,” adding: “Because it’s a little boring now.”

Not boring was the announcement today, via press release, that a motion has been filed to hold Trump in contempt and levy a $10k per day fine if he fails to comply.

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News, Observation, Politics

NY Attorney General files for Trump to be held in Contempt and $10,000 daily fine

photo collage / Lynxotic

The New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, filed a motion requesting from a state judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt. The former president has continually failed to comply with the official ruling that he turn over necessary documents. The details were in a press release published today by the office.

The judge had ordered Trump to follow the order for documents and information initially by March 3rd and was later extended further to a March 31st deadline. The state AG office reportedly requested documents on 8 separate occasions, and according to the filing, Trump has yet to produce any of the subpoenaed documents and on top of that has raised objections about it.

In a statement, James said “The judge’s order was crystal clear: Donald J. Trump must comply with our subpoena and turn over relevant documents to my office,” continuing he said “Instead of obeying a court order, Mr. Trump is trying to evade it. We are seeking the court’s immediate intervention because no one is above the law.” 

In addition to the New York state attorney general is asking the judge to issue an order of contempt, the ruling also has requested that Donald Trump be fined $10,000 each day until he complies with the ruling and provides the requested documentation. 

In the filing it states: “The Trump Organization is not presently searching any of Mr. Trump’s custodial files or devices, and has no intention of doing so between now and April 15, 2022”.

As reported by the NYT a spokesperson for the Trump Organization responded to the AG’s request as both “baseless” and the investigation referred to as a “witch hunt“.

On a very busy April 7th for the Trump ‘non-campaign’ an interview with The Washington Post was also published today. In this somewhat guarded interview Trump answered queries on the January 6th committee’s interviews with Ivanka and Jared, and on his intentions to declare himself as a candidate for the 2024 Presidential election.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Dozens Arrested as Scientists Worldwide Mobilize to Demand ‘Climate Revolution’

Photo Credit / Scientist Rebellion Twitter @ScientistRebel1

“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.”

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.

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.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished

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Food and Cooking, Health, Health and Diet, Lifestyle

Remind me again, why is salt bad for you?

Shutterstock

Evangeline Mantzioris, University of South Australia

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.

Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Books, Observation, Politics

How should Dostoevsky and Tolstoy be read during Russia’s war against Ukraine?

As someone who teaches Russian literature, I can’t help but process the world through the country’s novels, stories, poems and plays, even at a time when Russian cultural productions are being canceled around the world.

With the Russian army perpetrating devastating violence in Ukraine – which includes the slaughter of civilians in Bucha – the discussion of what to do with Russian literature has naturally arisen.

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.

You could make this argument about any great work of Russian literature, but as a scholar of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, I will stick with Russia’s most famous literary exports.

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?

I hope that he would, as many contemporary Russian writers have. But the dogmas of the Kremlin are pervasive, and many Russians accept them. Many Russians look away.

Tolstoy’s path to pacifism

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.

In 1904, Tolstoy penned a public letter denouncing the Russo-Japanese War, which has sometimes been compared with Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“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.”

By: Ani Kokobobo, Associate Professor of Russian Literature, University of Kansas

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

New Analysis Details ‘Master Class in War Profiteering’ by US Oil Giants

“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.

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).

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Climate Solutions, Politics, Science, Tesla

Revolutionary changes in transportation, from electric vehicles to ride sharing, could slow global warming – if they’re done right, IPCC says

Electric vehicle sales are growing quickly. Michael Fousert/Unsplash

Alan Jenn, University of California, Davis

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.

Transportation is a growing source of the global greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, accounting for 23% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2019 and 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

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.

Strong regulatory policies have encouraged the production of electric vehicles, including California’s Zero Emission Vehicle regulation, which requires automakers to produce a certain number of zero-emission vehicles based on their total vehicles sold in California; the European Union’s CO2 emissions standards for new vehicles; and China’s New Energy Vehicle policy, all of which have helped push EV adoption to where we are today.

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.

An important aspect to remember about electrifying the transportation system is that its ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions ultimately depends on how clean the electricity grid is. China, for example, is aiming for 20% of its vehicles to be electric by 2025, but its electric grid is still heavily reliant on coal.

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.

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Alan Jenn, Assistant Professional Researcher in Transportation, University of California, Davis

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News, Observation, Politics

Ukraine war: inside the complex web of Russia’s warring intelligence agencies

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.

Stephen Hall, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics, International Relations and Russia, University of Bath

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News, Observation, Politics

Ketanji Brown Jackson set for historic Supreme Court confirmation vote: 3 essential reads

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.

Margaret Russell, a constitutional law professor from Santa Clara University, saw signs of this lack of advancement during parts of Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.

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.”

Matt Williams, Breaking News Editor, The Conversation

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News, Observation, Politics, Science

Nuclear fusion hit a milestone thanks to better reactor walls – this engineering advance is building toward reactors of the future

Scientists at a laboratory in England have shattered the record for the amount of energy produced during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction. The production of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus – or JET – experiment in England has been called “a breakthrough” by some news outlets and caused quite a lot of excitement among physicists. But a common line regarding fusion electricity production is that it is “always 20 years away.”

photo collage / Lynxotic / adobe stock

We are a nuclear physicist and a nuclear engineer who study how to develop controlled nuclear fusion for the purpose of generating electricity.

The JET result demonstrates remarkable advancements in the understanding of the physics of fusion. But just as importantly, it shows that the new materials used to construct the inner walls of the fusion reactor worked as intended. The fact that the new wall construction performed as well as it did is what separates these results from previous milestones and elevates magnetic fusion from a dream toward a reality.

Fusing particles together

Nuclear fusion is the merging of two atomic nuclei into one compound nucleus. This nucleus then breaks apart and releases energy in the form of new atoms and particles that speed away from the reaction. A fusion power plant would capture the escaping particles and use their energy to generate electricity.

There are a few different ways to safely control fusion on Earth. Our research focuses on the approach taken by JET – using powerful magnetic fields to confine atoms until they are heated to a high enough temperature for them to fuse.

The fuel for current and future reactors are two different isotopes of hydrogen – meaning they have the one proton, but different numbers of neutrons – called deuterium and tritium. Normal hydrogen has one proton and no neutrons in its nucleus. Deuterium has one proton and one neutron while tritium has one proton and two neutrons.

For a fusion reaction to be successful, the fuel atoms must first become so hot that the electrons break free from the nuclei. This creates plasma – a collection of positive ions and electrons. You then need to keep heating that plasma until it reaches a temperature over 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million Celsius). This plasma must then be kept in a confined space at high densities for a long enough period of time for the fuel atoms to collide into each other and fuse together.

To control fusion on Earth, researchers developed donut-shaped devices – called tokamaks – which use magnetic fields to contain the plasma. Magnetic field lines wrapping around the inside of the donut act like train tracks that the ions and electrons follow. By injecting energy into the plasma and heating it up, it is possible to accelerate the fuel particles to such high speeds that when they collide, instead of bouncing off each other, the fuel nuclei fuse together. When this happens, they release energy, primarily in the form of fast-moving neutrons.

During the fusion process, fuel particles gradually drift away from the hot, dense core and eventually collide with the inner wall of the fusion vessel. To prevent the walls from degrading due to these collisions – which in turn also contaminates the fusion fuel – reactors are built so that they channel the wayward particles toward a heavily armored chamber called the divertor. This pumps out the diverted particles and removes any excess heat to protect the tokamak.

The walls are important

A major limitation of past reactors has been the fact that divertors can’t survive the constant particle bombardment for more than a few seconds. To make fusion power work commercially, engineers need to build a tokamak vessel that will survive for years of use under the conditions necessary for fusion.

The divertor wall is the first consideration. Though the fuel particles are much cooler when they reach the divertor, they still have enough energy to knock atoms loose from the wall material of the divertor when they collide with it. Previously, JET’s divertor had a wall made of graphite, but graphite absorbs and traps too much of the fuel for practical use.

Around 2011, engineers at JET upgraded the divertor and inner vessel walls to tungsten. Tungsten was chosen in part because it has the highest melting point of any metal – an extremely important trait when the divertor is likely to experience heat loads nearly 10 times higher than the nose cone of a space shuttle reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. The inner vessel wall of the tokamak was upgraded from graphite to beryllium. Beryllium has excellent thermal and mechanical properties for a fusion reactor – it absorbs less fuel than graphite but can still withstand the high temperatures.

The energy JET produced was what made the headlines, but we’d argue it is in fact the use of the new wall materials which make the experiment truly impressive because future devices will need these more robust walls to operate at high power for even longer periods of time. JET is a successful proof of concept for how to build the next generation of fusion reactors.

The next fusion reactors

The JET tokamak is the largest and most advanced magnetic fusion reactor currently operating. But the next generation of reactors is already in the works, most notably the ITER experiment, set to begin operations in 2027. ITER – which is Latin for “the way” – is under construction in France and funded and directed by an international organization that includes the U.S.

ITER is going to put to use many of the material advances JET showed to be viable. But there are also some key differences. First, ITER is massive. The fusion chamber is 37 feet (11.4 meters) tall and 63 feet (19.4 meters) around – more than eight times larger than JET. In addition, ITER will utilize superconducting magnets capable of producing stronger magnetic fields for longer periods of time compared to JET’s magnets. With these upgrades, ITER is expected to smash JET’s fusion records – both for energy output and how long the reaction will run.

ITER is also expected to do something central to the idea of a fusion powerplant: produce more energy than it takes to heat the fuel. Models predict that ITER will produce around 500 megawatts of power continuously for 400 seconds while only consuming 50 MW of energy to heat the fuel. This mean the reactor produced 10 times more energy than it consumed – a huge improvement over JET, which required roughly three times more energy to heat the fuel than it produced for its recent 59 megajoule record.

JET’s recent record has shown that years of research in plasma physics and materials science have paid off and brought scientists to the doorstep of harnessing fusion for power generation. ITER will provide an enormous leap forward toward the goal of industrial scale fusion power plants.

[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]

David Donovan, Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee and Livia Casali, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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News, Observation, Politics

Biden Urged to Fire Entire USPS Board for Complicity in ‘Devastating Arson’ by Trump and DeJoy

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey on Monday urged President Joe Biden to terminate all six sitting members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for their “silence and complicity” in the face of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and former President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the beloved government mail agency.

“Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent,” Pascrell wrote in a letter to Biden.

“Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.”

–Bill Pascrell, Jr

While the president does not have the authority under current law to fire DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to Trump who was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors last May—Biden does have the power to remove postal governors “for cause.” At present, the board consists entirely of Trump appointees—two Democrats and four Republicans.

Pascrell argued Monday that “the board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.”

Election season chaos comes back to haunt

Far from opposing DeJoy’s sweeping operational changes—which resulted in massively disruptive, nationwide mail delays that persisted through the November election and holiday season—USPS governors publicly praised the postmaster general, with one Republican board member gushing in September that “the board is tickled pink, every single board member, with the impact” DeJoy was having on the agency.

That glowing assessment of DeJoy’s performance during his first several months on the job did not comport with the experiences of postal workers—who in some cases resisted DeJoy’s policies—or the agency’s own internal evaluations, which showed that widespread delays followed the postmaster general’s changes.

DeJoy put his damaging policy moves on hold in August amid nationwide outrage and accusations that he was working to disrupt the election for Trump’s benefit. With the presidential election now in the past, DeJoy has recently signaled he plans to push ahead with his agenda.

In his letter to Biden, Pascrell wrote that the “continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them.”

“To begin that work,” Pascrell added, “we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest.”

There are currently four vacancies in top leadership positions at USPS, including three governor spots and the deputy postmaster general role. If Biden fills the remaining vacancies—USPS governors must be confirmed by the Senate—Democrats will have a majority on the board and potentially the votes needed to remove DeJoy from office.

“Trump confessed he was wrecking USPS to rig the election. His toady Postmaster General DeJoy carried out that arson. It’s time to clean house,”

Pascrell tweeted Monday. “DeJoy should be fired but also prosecuted.”

Asked about Pascrell’s demand during a briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “It’s an interesting question.”

“We all love the mailman and mailwoman,” said Psaki. “I don’t have anything for you on it. I’m happy to check with our team on it and see if we have any specifics. I’m not aware of anything, but we’ll circle back with you.”

Read Pascrell’s full letter:

Dear President Biden:

After several years of unprecedented sabotage, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is teetering on the brink of collapse. Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent. Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.

According to a report by the USPS Office of Inspector General, operational changes imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy “negatively impacted the quality and timeliness of mail service nationally” and were “implemented quickly and communicated primarily orally,” resulting in confusion and inconsistent application across the country. As DeJoy’s efforts to dismantle mail sorting machines, cut overtime, restrict deliveries, and remove mailboxes slowed mail nationally, Donald Trump himself openly admitted that his administration was withholding funding for the Postal Service in order to make it harder to process mail-in ballots.

Things became so bad that on August 14, 2020, I filed a complaint with our state’s Attorney General calling on him to seek indictments against your predecessor and the Postmaster General for election subversion. Postal operations have continued to severely lag benchmark levels under DeJoy and this slate of Governors. This holiday season, USPS reported an unprecedented level of mail disruption, with only 64 percent of first-class mail delivered on time in late December. Through it all, the Governors were either silent or in support of DeJoy’s havoc.

The members of the USPS Board of Governors have but one central responsibility: “represent[ing] the public interest.” Members may be removed by the President “only for cause.” The board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.

As America’s perhaps most enduringly trusted institution, a central economic and social engine for every community in America, and a vital vanguard of the democratic tradition, the Post Office must play an essential role in our national life for generations to come. The continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them. To begin that work, we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest. Thank you for your continued dedication to saving our Post Office.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.

Member of Congress

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Elon Musk, Observation, Social Media, Twitter

Elon Musk’s Epic Sunday Tweet Barrage Spans the Scope of Human Consciousness

Video

So many topics, reactions, memes and insights, so little time!

Sunday April 3, 2022 will, perhaps be remembered in the history of twitter as the day that Elon Musk finally came out of his shell (wink). Tweeting, replying, commenting, liking, a quick look at all the activity and it’s apparent that, even for the prolific techno king, this was a day of days.

Nor has it only been the quantity of engagement and activity, the breath and wingspan of the subject matter was truly epic. The storm has finally slowed, with the following cryptic tweet at approximately 1:45 PM PDT, meaning shortly before 11pm in Berlin (in case that’s where he’s been tweeting and responding from.

On Saturday there was a series of somewhat typical (a-typical really, which is typical) meme and humor oriented tweets. These were interesting enough for us to post the report below with, in our estimation, the Dogecoin video repost as the highlight.

Elon Musk Pumps Dogecoin Video in Tweet: ‘Explains Everything’

Next a unique and unexpected shift toward un-twitter-like substance and gravitas

Soon after the activity took a turn towards the profound and thoughtful. First Elon started a thread (or joined it’s hard to tell) about a favorite subject, the lack of population growth and referenced an article from Scientific American entitled ‘The Pandemic caused a Baby Bust, Not a Boom“.

Naturally this created an ongoing explosion of reactions and retweets that continues as we go to press:

Next came the topic of “peace” and why people who actually aspire towards it reject the word and its, presumable, inappropriate use:

And then, as if to rise above the fray and conclude with a transcendental observation a tweet above twitter came forth…

Somehow, amidst this clarity and provocative yet introspective message, he also took the time to comment, positively on a variety of replies and tweets where he had been tagged (which no doubt happens thousands of times per minute).

His fairly straightforward endorsement, for example, of this video posted by Popular Mechanics, will be a huge boost for that publication and no doubt cause the video views to hit the stratosphere tonight… ‘Good summary’ was Elon’s take on the clip.

Check out the clip of Elon Musk responding thoughtfully on “zero-sum mindset” during a recent interview with Lex Fridman and edited for length and content by our own video dept.:

Or this video, that Elon also praised in a reaction tweet when tagged by the author, Cleo Abram. This video is, indeed, fantastic and relates to sustainable energy infrastructure, and how it must be rapidly expanded. Not just to stave off a climate catastrophe, but as the initial baseline towards increased energy use, which it is pointed out in the clip, will have a highly beneficial effect on humanity, since green renewables are, by definition, unlimited.

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Elon Musk, Social Media

Elon Musk waxes Philosophic in Tweet: ‘That is what drives me’

Video

Using Language that evokes his well known comments regarding the reasons why a mission, and eventually colony, on Mars is his passion, Elon Musk just tweeted that he is inspired by curiosity.

Further, that it is curiosity that drives him.

And then, in a more generalized summation of his thoughts regarding human consciousness, he implores us to join him in a journey leading to an expansion of the ‘scope and scale of consciousness’, “that we may aspire to understand the universe”.


After a weekend barrage of humorous and meme oriented tweets and replies such a serious and thoughtful note comes across as a rare and special occurrence.

Although just an anecdotal and non-scientific study a random browsing of his account also shows a seemingly large increase in the number of replies comments and other interactions with accounts of all types.


He seems to be in a truly jovial and generous mood this weekend showering compliments on random posts related or even unrelated to him personally.

It’s fantastic to see this, and must be incredible for some of the lucky individuals and organizations that he is bringing attention to via his 80 million followers.
He even posted replies to his initial tweet above:

And weighing in on nearly anything he reads:

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News, Politics

Biden bets a million barrels a day will drive down soaring gas prices – what you need to know about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Several sites, such as one near Freeport, Texas, store the hundreds of million of barrels in the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy via AP

Scott L. Montgomery, University of Washington

The Biden administration on March 31, 2022, said it plans to release an unprecedented 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat the recent spike in gas and diesel prices. About a million barrels of oil will be released every day for up to six months.

If all the oil is released, it would represent almost one-third of the current volume of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It follows a release of 30 million barrels in early March, a large withdrawal until the latest one.

But what is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, why was it created, and when has it been used? And does it still serve a purpose, given that the U.S. exports more oil and other petroleum products than it imports?

As an energy researcher, I believe considering the reserve’s history can help answer these questions.

Origins of the reserve

Congress created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 in response to a global oil crisis.

Arab oil-exporting states led by Saudi Arabia had cut supply to the world market because of Western support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Oil prices quadrupled, resulting in major economic damage to the U.S. and other countries. This also shook the average American, who had grown used to cheap oil.

The oil crisis caused the U.S., Japan and 15 other advanced countries to form the International Energy Agency in 1974 to recommend policies that would forestall such events in the future. One of the agency’s key ideas was to create emergency petroleum reserves that could be drawn on in case of a severe supply disruption.

The map shows the locations of the oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act originally stipulated the reserve should hold up to 1 billion barrels of crude and refined petroleum products. Though it has never reached that size, the U.S. reserve is the largest in the world, with a maximum volume of 714 million barrels. The cap was previously set at 727 million barrels.

As of March 25, 2022, the reserve contained about 568 million barrels.

Oil in the reserve is stored underground in a series of large underground salt domes in four locations along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, and is linked to major supply pipelines in the region.

Salt domes, formed when a mass of salt is forced upward, are a good choice for storage since salt is impermeable and has low solubility in crude oil. Most of the storage sites were acquired by the federal government in 1977 and became fully operational in the 1980s.

History of drawdowns

In the 1975 act, Congress specified that the reserve was intended to prevent “severe supply interruptions” – that is, actual oil shortages.

Over time, as the oil market has changed, Congress expanded the list of reasons for which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be tapped, such as domestic supply interruptions due to extreme weather.

Prior to March 2022, about 280 million barrels of crude oil had been released since the reserve’s creation, including a 50 million release that began in November 2021.

There have only been three emergency releases in the reserve’s history. The first was in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait the year before, which resulted in a sharp drop in oil supply to the world market. The U.S. released 34 million barrels.

The second release, of 30 million barrels, came in 2005 after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina knocked out Gulf of Mexico production, which then comprised about 25% of U.S. domestic supply.

The third was a coordinated release by the International Energy Agency in 2011 as a result of supply disruptions from several oil-producing countries, including Libya, then facing civil unrest during the Arab Spring. In all, the agency coordinated a release of 60 million barrels of crude, half of which came from the U.S.

In addition, there have been 11 planned sales of oil from the reserve, mainly to generate federal revenue. One of these – the 1996-1997 sale to reduce the federal budget deficit – seemed to serve political ends rather than supply-related ones.

A better way to avoid pain at the pump

President Joe Biden’s November decision to tap the reserve was also seen as political by Republicans because there was no emergency shortage of supply at that time.

Similarly, the latest historic release of 180 million barrels could also be seen as serving a political purpose – in an election year, no less. But I believe it also seems perfectly legitimate in terms of fulfilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s original purpose: reducing the negative impacts of a major oil price shock.

Though the U.S. is today a net petroleum exporter, it continues to import as much as 8.2 million barrels of crude oil every day.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But in my view, the best way to avoid the pain of oil price shocks is to lower oil demand by reducing global carbon emissions – rather than mainly relying on releases from the reserve.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 24, 2021.

Scott L. Montgomery, Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Crypto

Elon Musk Pumps Dogecoin Video in Tweet: ‘Explains Everything’

Video

Department of Doge HQ Urgent Missive

Elon Musk’s been on a roll meme tweeting again and took the opportunity to reply to the tweet below with a link to a YouTube video that “explains everything” about DogeCoin and presumably crypto mining and bitcoin and, yea.

Naturally the meme filled classic Doge video has nearly 4 million views, likely many of which came on the wave of clicks from this otherwise innocuous exchange from the Techno King and @wintonARK

In other recent tweets and replies this hilariously spot on leak of the new ‘Boba Fett Trailer’ was launched and is racking up thousands of retweets as this article is being written.

Perhaps the timing is good for this video – the lighthearted and adorable doggie style showing the pure joy of crypto freedom is a welcome oasis of love and laughter. If you join the 4 million that’ve already viewed this clip and you agree, let us know – or just go ahead and be yourself. Either way.

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Books

The Best Alien, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and UFO Books

Curious about aliens encounters, extraterrestrial life and UFO sightings?  Us humans have and continue to search for answers on that big question.  And it seems like the more we uncover about our vast universe, the more questions and less we actually know.  

Read More: Aliens and “Galactic Federation” reported on by Major News Outlets as if ‘Real’

 Life beyond Earth has held a long been an interest and have made a resurgence in news. Including mysterious monoliths appears in different parts of the world.  Even reports from a former Israeli space program claiming an existing government alliance between aliens (via the Galactic Federation) with humans. 

Chariots of the Gods: 50th Anniversary Edition

Click to see “Chariots of the Gods”
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Also available on Amazon.

AS SEEN ON ANCIENT ALIENS’ “THE ALIEN PHENOMENON” Now in a beautiful 50th anniversary edition with a new foreword and afterword by the author, this is the groundbreaking classic that introduced the theory that ancient Earth established contact with aliens.

Immediately recognized as a work of monumental importance, Chariots of the Godsendures as proof that Earth has been visited repeatedly by advanced aliens from other worlds. Here, Erich von Däniken examines ancient ruins, lost cities, spaceports, and a myriad of hard scientific facts that point to extraterrestrial intervention in human history. Most incredible of all, however, is von Däniken’s theory that we are the descendants of these galactic pioneers–and he reveals the archaeological discoveries that prove it… An alien astronaut preserved in a pyramid
* Thousand-year-old spaceflight navigation charts
* Computer astronomy from Incan and Egyptian ruins
* A map of the land beneath the ice cap of Antarctica
* A giant spaceport discovered in the Andes
Includes remarkable photos that document mankind’s first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization

Gateway

Click to see “Gateway”
and help independent bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

WINNER OF THE HUGO AND NEBULA AWARDS – Frederik Pohl stands shoulder to shoulder with Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury as one of the brilliant vision-aries in the science fiction stratosphere. Gateway is a modern masterpiece that defines–and transcends–its genre.

Seeded among the stars are troves of valuable artifactsleft behind by the enigmatic, long-vanished alien racecalled the Heechee. For the right price, anyone can climb aboard one of the abandoned Heechee spaceships, castoff on an autopilot voyage to parts unknown, and takea chance on finding wealth . . . or facing death.

Robinette Broadhead took that chance and walked awaya winner. But at what cost? Despite living a millionaire’s life of material luxury, he’s haunted by crippling despair–and the dark secrets buried deep in his psyche. With the help of his computerized psychiatrist, the truth about whathappened “out there” could set Broadhead free. But only after a personal journey more terrifying and, ultimately, more devastating than his last fateful trip into space. Click to see “Gateway” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition

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50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION–WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction–winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid.

His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters… Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction. Click to see “The Left Hand of Darkness” and help bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record

Click to see “UFOs”
and help independent bookstores.
Also available on Amazon.

Leslie Kean, a veteran investigative reporter who has spent the past ten years studying the still-unexplained UFO phenomenon, reviewed hundreds of government documents, aviation reports, radar data, and case studies with corroborating physical evidence. She interviewed dozens of high-level officials and aviation witnesses from around the world.

Among them, five Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources–including Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, and Nick Pope, former head of the British Defence Ministry’s UFO Investigative Unit–have written their own breathtaking, firsthand accounts about UFO encounters and investigations exclusively for this book. With the support of former White House chief of staff John Podesta, Kean lifts the veil on decades of U.S. government misinformation about this mysterious phenomenon and presents irrefutable evidence that unknown flying objects–metallic, luminous, and seemingly able to maneuver in ways that defy the laws of physics–actually exist. Click to see “UFOs” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.

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Business, News, Observation, Politics

Workers in New York Vote to Form Amazon’s First-Ever Union in US

“We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because while he was up there, we were organizing a union,” said Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union.

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Pixels / Adobe Stock

Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York won their election Friday to form the retail giant’s first-ever union in the United States, a landmark victory for the labor movement in the face of aggressive union-busting efforts from one of the world’s most powerful companies.

According to an initial tally released by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), there were 2,654 votes in favor of recognizing a union and 2,131 against. The number of disputed ballots, 67, is not nearly enough to change the outcome.

The historic unionization drive was spearheaded by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a worker-led group not affiliated with any established union. Christian Smalls, the president of ALU, was fired by Amazon in 2020 after he led a protest against the company’s poor workplace safety standards in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

“When Covid-19 came into play, Amazon failed us,” Smalls said during a press conference after the union victory was announced. “We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because while he was up there, we were organizing a union.”

Long-time labor journalist Steven Greenhouse wrote Friday that “the unionization victory at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island is by far the biggest, beating-the-odds, David-versus-Goliath unionization win I’ve seen.”

“America’s wealthiest, most powerful, most seemingly indispensable company has lost to a pop-up coalition of workers,” Greenhouse added. “A generation, the younger generation, is stirring.”

Amazon, which spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021 alone, worked hard to crush the unionization effort, forcing employees to attend hundreds of captive-audience meetings and threatening workers with pay cuts and other potential consequences.

But the company’s union-busting campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the upstart revolt led by ALU, which was founded just months ago.

Derrick Palmer, a co-founder of ALU and an employee at the Staten Island warehouse, said he expects Friday’s victory to be one of many.

“This will be the first union,” said Palmer, “but moving forward, that will motivate other workers to get on board with us.”

Widespread celebration followed the official announcement of the union’s election win, with progressive lawmakers and activists hailing the victory as a potential watershed moment for the U.S. labor movement, which has struggled for decades in the face of corporate America’s relentless assault. Union membership in the U.S. declined by 241,000 workers in 2021, according to Labor Department figures.

“The organizing victory at Amazon on Staten Island is a signal that American workers will no longer accept exploitation,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday. “They’re tired of working longer hours for lower wages. They want an economy that works for all, not just Jeff Bezos.”

The union has much work ahead of it. As HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson noted, the union must now negotiate “a first collective bargaining agreement with one of the most powerful companies in the world.”

“It can take years for a union to secure a first contract, and some never manage to,” Jamieson wrote. “Amazon would have a strong incentive not to offer the union a decent deal, for fear it would only encourage more unionization elsewhere.”

 Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Business, Climate Solutions, News, Politics

As Consumers Pay, Oil CEO’s Refuse to Testify to Congress About Soaring Prices

“While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation,” said one watchdog group. “They should be ashamed.”

As people across the United States face record-high gas prices—compounded by rising grocery bills and prices for other essentials—executives at three major oil companies are refusing to testify before Congress about what their firms could do to lessen the burden on U.S. households, leaving Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates to condemn the companies for profiting amid lower and middle-class people’s financial pain.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, had invited the CEOs of EOG Resources Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. to testify next week, only to be rebuffedTuesday by the executives, who have personally profited off gas prices which averaged $4.24 per gallon on Monday.

“I invited these companies to come before the committee and make their case, but apparently they don’t think it’s worth defending,” Grijalva said in a statement Tuesday. “Their silence tells us all we need to know—that cries for more drilling and looser regulations are nothing more than another age-old attempt to line their own pockets.

Since oil and gas prices began rising earlier this year as traveling and commuting increased, and went up further following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the fossil fuel industry has claimed the Biden administration should release more permits for drilling on public lands and accelerate approval of permits for building energy infrastructure, with the American Petroleum Institute pushing for what Grijalva called “a domestic drilling free-for-all” earlier this month.

Lawmakers including Grijalva have argued that the companies could easily stabilize gas prices immediately, considering the billions of dollars in profits EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum raked in last year.

Instead, watchdog group Accountable.US said Tuesday, Occidental Petroleum planned to use $3 billion for stock buybacks in 2022, while Devon Energy gave nearly $2 billion in share buybacks and dividends to shareholders last year. EOG Resources gave CEO William R. Thomas a $150,000 raise in 2021, making his total compensation $9.8 million.

“We want to work with them to reduce gas prices, but it seems as though they’re too busy taking in record profits while refusing to pass savings on to consumers,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sarcastically expressed empathy for the “spineless” executives who refused to testify before Grijalva’s committee.

“It is hardly surprising that EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum are dodging accountability by refusing to testify in Congress,” said Kyle Herrig, president of watchdog group Accountable.US. “While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation. They should be ashamed.”

Grijalva noted that while the industry has used the Russian invasion of Ukraine to call for even more freedom to drill for oil and gas, fossil fuel companies hold leases on 26 million acres of land.

“These same companies already have over 9,000 approved permits they can use whenever they want,” Grijalva told Public News Service on Tuesday. “And the very companies with thousands of acres of existing leases and hundreds of unused permits are the same ones shouting that they need more land for drilling.”

According to Accountable.US, the three companies refusing to speak to Grijalva’s committee “are among the top leaseholders of public lands oil and gas leases with 4,114 leases covering nearly 1.5 million acres.”

Companies including BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell have also been invited to testify at upcoming hearings on their business practices and impacts on consumers. In February, board members from the four companies refused to testify about the firms’ climate pledges.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted last week that oil prices dropped in recent days, but no savings were passed onto consumers.

“The bewildering incongruity between falling oil prices and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging and is deeply damaging to working Americans,” Schumer said last week. “The Senate is going to get answers.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY  and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Business, Elon Musk, Observation

WtF is a Centibillionaire? New Video from Robert Reich

Video

A very real problem vividly illustrated for the rest of us

In a new video from Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and accomplished author, an extremely timely, entertaining and absolutely crazy subject is front and center.

The need to create an actual word for a human being with more than $100 billion is a strange problem to have in a world where so many struggle merely to survive.

Just as is the case, but even more, so with trillion dollar market cap big tech firms, that happened to be the source of this insanely huge amount of money being attributed to a single individual.

There is a very human inability to comprehend such massive numbers that is at the heart of our struggles to understand the meaning of this phenomenon.

An example would be a company such as Amazon which is hundreds, if not thousands, of times larger in terms of market cap then what used to be considered massive international corporations.

And being thousands of times larger than what is already considered to be an unwieldy massive behemoth can create problems not so much for the company but for the rest of us.

How do you control if you are the government or the people something so massive that it is virtually untouchable. too big to fail? Too big to reign in, absolutely.

Although attempts are being made, such as the many antitrust actions in the US, or the recent new regulations in Europe, but somehow they always seem like a tiny pittance, or annoying mosquito on a battleship.

In the video below there are some fantastic examples of how the massive wealth of these individuals can be measured in terms that actual humans can understand.

“Are they really 100 times smarter than the typical billionaire?”

Perhaps, more accurately, it enables us to understand how absolutely unbelievable and insane this level of wealth and power actually is.

Although the subject may be too large and complicated, it would be great to see a follow on video illustrating the size of the companies that bestowed such massive amounts of cash on these ridiculously overvalued individuals.

And, of course, how those companies grew through the same kinds of favoritism and maneuvering in the public realm that the centi-billionaires themselves directly benefit from.


How Much is $100 Billion, Really?

The word “‘billionaire” didn’t even exist until 1844. Fifty years later, we got “multibillionaire.” And for the next 127 years, that was enough. 

But in 2020, while the working class faced near-record unemployment during the pandemic, the wealthiest Americans faced a different problem.

Some of them had gotten so rich, there was no longer a word to describe just how rich they were. 


That’s why today I want to bring you one of the newest additions to the English language: “centibillionaires,” people with $100 billion or more.  

What’s it like being one of history’s first centibillionaires? It’s hard to even imagine, but let’s try it by comparing them to the less fortunate.

By which I mean just … regular … billionaires. 
If you’re a regular billionaire, you can afford a private jet. If you’re a centibillionaire, you can afford a brand-new Gulfstream jet every single day for more than ten years.


Not sure what you’d do with a new Gulfstream every day — maybe give one to each of your closest 4,000 friends?

A regular billionaire would struggle to buy their own professional baseball team. Sad, I know. But a centibillionaire could easily buy every team in the entire major league. 

If you’re a regular billionaire, you can donate to your alma mater and get your name on a building. If you’re a centibillionaire, you could single-handedly give every teacher in America an $8,000 raise for 5 straight years. 


Of course, that’s not all you could do. $100 billion is enough to wipe out all the medical debt in the United States.

Or provide permanent shelter for every homeless person in America. Or buy Covid-19 vaccines for the entire world.


Basically what I’m saying is, $100 billion is a lot of money. More than two and a half million times what the average American worker makes in a year.


So here’s the big question. Are these centibillionaires so rich because they work two and half million times harder than the average American?

Are they really 100 times smarter than the typical billionaire?


I don’t think so.

The reason for the rise of centibillionaires is that for decades, wealth hasn’t trickled down, it’s gushed up, all the way to the very top. That’s not an accident. As it turns out, the system that the super-rich themselves carefully crafted and lobbied for, benefits… the rich!

And while you may not own more private jets than your average centibillionaire, you probably do pay a higher tax rate. And thanks to legal loopholes and the Trump tax cuts, when the wealthiest Americans die, they get to pass on most of their centibillions to their kids tax-free. 


We’ve got two choices as a country. We can tax the richest Americans fairly, and invest that money in ways that benefit all of us.


Or we can keep doing what we’re doing, and watch as centibillionaires get even richer while the rest of us get left behind.

If you think wealth and power are too concentrated in the hands of a privileged few now, just imagine what a few more years of trickle-down nonsense will bring.


Of course, it won’t be all bad. At least “trillionaire” is easy to say.