By mid-century, 10 million people a year are projected to die from untreatable infections. Can Cassandra, an ethnobotanist at Emory University convince Steve that herbs and ancient healing are key to our medical future?
Tag: war
Mark Meadows Discussed PowerPoint About Options to Overturn Election – Rolling Stone
The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol on Thursday released slides from a PowerPoint calling for former President Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to delay the certification of the results of the 2020 election.
The presentation was referred to in an email provided to the committee by Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff who’s had a rough couple of weeks, to say the least.
The revelation is the latest piece of evidence that Trump and his inner circle, including his allies in Congress, were very actively and very aggressively trying to overturn the results of the election, which Trump lost handily.
— Read on www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mark-meadows-overturn-election-results-jan-6-committee-1269532/
Facebook Is Stifling Independent Report on Its Impact in India, Human Rights Groups Say – WSJ
Human rights groups say Facebook is stifling an independent report it commissioned to investigate hate speech on its services in India, the company’s largest market by customers and where scrutiny of its operations is increasing.
Representatives for the organizations say they have provided extensive input to a U.S. law firm that Facebook commissioned in mid-2020 to undertake the report. The groups say they supplied hundreds of examples of inflammatory content and suggested ways Facebook could better police its services in India.
Facebook executives from the company’s human rights team, which is overseeing the law firm’s effort, have since narrowed the draft report’s scope and are delaying a process that has already taken more than a year, the groups say.
“They are trying to kill it,” said Ratik Asokan of India Civil Watch International, one of the organizations that provided the law firm with input. Mr. Asokan said that Facebook has raised technical objections through the law firm that have caused delays, such as changing definitions of what can be considered hate speech and included in the report, undermining what Facebook said would be an independent study. The law firm hasn’t provided a timeline for completing it, he said.
— Read on www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-is-stifling-independent-report-on-its-impact-in-india-human-rights-groups-say-11636725601
Neighbours of Belarus say migrant crisis risks military clash | Reuters
Countries bordering Belarus on Thursday warned the migrant crisis on the European Union’s eastern borders could escalate into a military confrontation while Ukraine said it would deploy thousands more troops to reinforce its frontier.
— Read on www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-reports-violent-clashes-overnight-migrants-attempt-new-border-breach-2021-11-11/
China cracks down on ‘characteristic towns’ that misused land, real estate while racking up massive debt | South China Morning Post
Move is in line with China’s efforts to reduce high local government debt and excess that collectively pose a serious threat to the national economy and property market.
— Read on www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3155055/china-cracks-down-characteristic-towns-misused-land-real
Central Asia is stepping up battles with tech giants. Russia’s playbook is a model. – The Washington Post
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan both pulled back attempts at restricting social media networks after public backlash.
— Read on www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/uzbekistan-kazakhstan-big-tech/2021/11/06/857efe86-3db4-11ec-bd6f-da376f47304e_story.html
The big picture: Antanas Sutkus captures childhood defiance in Soviet Lithuania | Photography | The Guardian
The photographer and his family suffered under the repressive regime, but his images of children find a spirit that escapes propaganda
— Read on www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/nov/07/the-big-picture-antanas-sutkus-captures-childhood-defiance-in-soviet-lithuania
Humanity’s Impact | Studio Birthplace
Short film Humanity’s Impact explores the question:
‘How many plastic bottles do we produce globally in real time?’
And the accompanying Augmented Reality app
invites users to interact with the data on a personal level.
Animated Series
Did you know that globally, we produce about 1 million plastic bottles per minute?
What does that number even look like? This is what you’re about to find out in Humanity’s Impact.Set in a 1960s American suburb test site that is populated with plastic test dummies, the film unleashes 20,000 bottles per second that crash onto the unknowing cast of dummies. The bottles burst through the kitchen window, and engulf the family dog. The suburban paradise is quickly flooded, revealing the terrifying scale and rate at which we pollute our planet. Only 9% of the overwhelming pile of plastic bottles actually gets recycled, the rest is dumped or burnt, or ends up in landfills and our oceans.
Augmented Reality App
To be able to understand our own consumption behavior better, we partnered with interactive design studio Superposition to release the augmented reality app Humanity’s Impact to help users relate to consumption-related data on an even more personal level. For example, users can drop 20,000 bottles into their own kitchen or bedroom, pledge to reduce their own plastic use, track their progress, take a photo with their data and share it on social media to motivate others to take part. The app is available for free right now on the Apple App Store and on Google Play.
view more work
Before we made the highly successful film Wasteminster for Greenpeace, we made the pilot film Humanity’s Impact. With the film, we wanted to explore if we could make visible the incredible data related to humanity’s impact on our planet, putting a picture to the numbers.Both the animated series and the accompanying augmented reality app unleash impressive data simulations, visualizing the tremendous scale in which our consumer culture operates.
The project aims to create awareness and inspire action towards a more sustainable future
— Read on www.studiobirthplace.com/humanitysimpact
43 countries call on China to respect Uyghur rights
Forty-three countries have called on China to “ensure full respect for the rule of law” for the Muslim Uyghur community in Xinjiang, in a statement read at the United Nations on Thursday that sparked outrage from Beijing.
— Read on www.yahoo.com/news/forty-three-countries-call-china-192425564.html
How does this nation have such thin skin?
Because of desperation. It is weakness that causes a need to grip itself and the people living inside ever tighter.
Why the U.N.’s Biodiversity Conference Is So Important – The New York Times
Countries are gathering in an effort to stop a biodiversity collapse that scientists say could equal climate change as an existential crisis.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/climate/un-biodiversity-conference-climate-change.html