#Like looking for I thought of areas for fossils using centuries of data

[thisismenow3]

Just pay people to do things!!!!! You know who can make a meal plan? A cook, a nutritionist, a person with years of cooking experience for large groups, etc. We have a world that is on fire and people who are damn near close with low wages, high expenses. Just. Fucking. Employ. PEOPLE!!!!!

[sciencespies]

Ancient Toes and Soles of Fossilized Footprints Now 3-D Digitized for the Ages

https://sciencespies.com/nature/ancient-toes-and-soles-of-fossilized-footprints-now-3-d-digitized-for-the-ages/

Ancient Toes and Soles of Fossilized Footprints Now 3-D Digitized for the Ages

While walking in the shadow of their people’s sacred volcano, Maasai villagers in 2006 stumbled across a set of curious footprints. Clearly made by human feet, but set in stone, they appeared to be the enigmatic traces of some long-forgotten journey.

Now scientists have teased out some of story behind those ancient prints and the people who, with some help from the volcano, left them behind. It begins while they were walking through the same area as the Maasai—separated by a span of perhaps 10,000 years.

“It’s kind of amazing to walk alongside these footprints and say, ‘Wow, thousands of years ago somebody walked here. What were they doing? What were they looking for? Where were they going?’” says Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History with the Human Origins Program. Pobiner is one of the scientists who has studied the prints at Engare Sero in Tanzania during the 14 years since their initial discovery.

An in-depth footprint analysis has now produced an intriguing theory to explain what the walkers were doing on the day when impressions of their toes and soles were preserved on a mudflat. Pobiner and her colleagues, in a study recently published in Scientific Reports, suggest that a large collection of the tracks, moving in the same direction at the same pace, were made by a primarily female group that was foraging around what was then on or near a lakeshore. This practice of sexually-divided gathering behavior is still seen among living hunter-gather peoples, but no bone or tool would ever be able to reveal whether it was practiced by their predecessors so long ago.

Footprints, however, allow us to quite literally retrace their steps.

When Kevin Hatala, the lead author of the study, and his colleagues began working the site in 2009 they found 56 visible footprints that had been exposed by the forces of erosion over the centuries. But they soon realized that the bulk of the site remained hidden from view. Between 2009 and 2012 the researchers excavated what has turned out to be the largest array of modern human fossil footprints yet found in Africa, 408 definitively human prints in total. It’s most likely that the prints were made between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, but the study’s conservative dating range stretches from as early as 19,000 to as recently as 5,760 years ago.

A previous analysis, involving some of the same authors, determined that as these people walked, their feet squished into an ashy mudflat produced by an eruption of Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano, which even today is still active and looms over the site of the footprints.

“It’s kind of amazing,” says Briana Pobiner, “to walk alongside these footprints and say, ‘Wow, thousands of years ago somebody walked here. What were they doing? What were they looking for?”

(William Harcourt-Smith)

Deposits from the volcano were washed down into the mudflat. After the human group walked across and over the area, creating so many prints that scientists have nicknamed one heavily-trod area “the dance floor,” the ashy mud hardened in a matter of days or even hours. Then it was buried by a subsequent sediment flow which preserved it until the actions of erosion brought dozens of prints to light—and the excavations of the team unearthed hundreds more.

Fossil footprints capture behavior in a way that bones and stones cannot. The process of preservation happens over a short period of time. So while bones around a hearth don’t necessarily mean that their owners circled the fire at exactly the same time, fossilized footprints can reveal those kinds of immediate interactions.

“It’s a snapshot of life at a moment in time, the interaction of individuals, the interaction of humans with animals that’s preserved in no other way. So it’s a real boon to behavioral ecology.” says Matthew Bennett an expert on ancient footprints at Bournemouth University. Bennett, who wasn’t involved in the study, has visited the Engare Sero site.

Fossil footprints are analyzed by size and shape, by the orientation of the foot as it created the print, and by the distances between the prints which, combined with other aspects, can be used to estimate how fast the individual walked or ran. One of the ancient travelers who left a trackway heading in a different direction than the larger group appears to have been passing through the area in a hurry, running at better than six miles per hour.

As these people walked, their feet squished into an ashy mudflat produced by an eruption of Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano, which even today (above) is still active and looms over the site of the footprints.

(Cynthia Liutkus-Pierce)

The main group, heading to the southwest, moved at a more leisurely pace. The team’s footprint analysis suggests it most likely consisted of 14 adult females accompanied, intermittently at least, by two adult males and a juvenile male.

“I think it looks like it’s a good reflection of what we see in some modern hunter-gatherers with groups of women foraging together,” says Pobiner. Tanzania’s Hadza and Paraguay’s Aché peoples still tackle these tasks in a similar manner. “Oftentimes there is basically gender foraging, where women will forage together and men will forage together. There are sometimes mixed groups, but we often see this kind of sexual division of labor in terms of food gathering,” Pobiner says. “It doesn’t mean that these 14 women always foraged together,” she adds. “But at least on this one day or this one instance, this is what we see in this group.”

While no animals appear to have been traveling with the group, there are prints nearby of zebra and buffalo. The humans and the animals were apparently sharing a landscape that even today isn’t far from the southern shoreline of Lake Natron. Depending on exactly when the prints are made the water may have been much closer to the current site.

“We’re able to give a level of accessibility to everyone,” says Vince Rossi whose team (above on location) has made the 3D footprints available online, and the data from a selection of prints can even be downloaded to a 3D printer.

(Adam Metallo, Smithsonian Digitization Program Office)

“It’s possible that these were just people and animals kind of wandering along the lakeshore all looking for something to eat,” Pobiner says. Other sets of footprints, like those made in northwestern Kenya, capture just this sort of behavior among ancient hominins like Homo erectus.

“They did a very nice study on a very nice set of footprints. It’s well executed and they have come up with some really interesting conclusions,” Matthew Bennett says of the research, adding that it’s a welcome addition to a rapidly growing body of scientific literature on the subject of ancient trackways.

Fossilized footprints were once thought to be extremely rare, “freaks of geological preservation,” Bennett notes. An explosion of fossil footprint discoveries over the past decade suggests they aren’t so rare after all, but surprisingly common wherever our ancient relatives put one foot in front of the other, from Africa to New Mexico.

“If you think about it there’s something like 206 bones in the body, so maybe 206 chances that a body fossil will be preserved,” Bennett says. “But in an average modern lifetime you’ll make millions and millions of footprints, a colossal number. Most won’t be preserved, but we shouldn’t be surprised that they aren’t actually so rare in the geological record.”

A famous set of prints from nearby Laetoli, Tanzania dates to some 3.6 million years ago and was likely made by Australopithecus afarensis. At New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument, ancient footprints of human and beast may be evidence of an ancient sloth hunt.

Study co-author Vince Rossi, supervisor of the 3D program at the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office, aims to give these particular fossil footprints even wider distribution. His team created 3D images of the site that initially supported scientific research and analysis efforts. Today they are extending the footprints’ journey from a Tanzanian mudflat to the farthest corners of the globe.

“How many people can travel to this part of Tanzania to actually see these footprints? We’re able to give a level of accessibility to everyone,” he says. Rossi’s team has made the 3D footprints available online, and the data from a selection of prints can even be downloaded to a 3D printer so that users can replicate their favorite Engare Sero footprints.

Because 3D images capture the footprints as they appeared at a specific moment in time they’ve also become a valuable tool for preservation. The study employed two sets of images, Rossi’s 2010 array and a suite of 3D images taken by an Appalachian State University team in 2017. Comparing those images reveals visible degradation of the exposed prints during that relatively short time, and highlights the urgency of protecting them now that they’ve been stripped of the overlying layers that protected them for thousands of years.

Finding ways to preserve the footprints is a key prerequisite for uncovering more, which seems likely because the tracks heading northward lead directly under sediment layers that haven’t been excavated. Future finds would add to a paleoanthropological line of investigation that is delivering different kinds of results than traditional digs of tools or fossils.

“Footprints give us information about anatomy and group dynamics that you just can’t get from bones,” Pobiner says. “And I love the idea that there are different and creative ways for us to interpret behaviors of the past.”

#Nature

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 39: Many Matters Up For Consideration

Content warning for this chapter: some unintentional misgendering of a gender-fluid character occurs. Walt knows Bernie's preference is "if it's unclear which pronoun set I'm currently using, use 'they/them'," but Walt is also out of practice checking if there is a pronoun set Bernie is currently using other than 'they/them', and so refers to Bernie as 'they/them' while the audience knows Bernie is using 'she/her'.

Becoming the Mask

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"So, what did Blinky say when he dragged you off earlier?" Toby asked Jim.

The Changeling rolled over in his sleeping bag and propped himself up on one arm, facing the bed.

"He apologized for some stuff he said when he found out what I am, and he told me where troll babies come from. Whelps incubate in Heartstone chunks called 'birthstones' – which I think explains the thing about Gunmar's Birthstone being 'a rotten Heartstone'. It makes a lot more sense now. Like calling someone 'a bad seed' or 'a bad egg'. Birthstones are kind of like fish eggs, except both parents fertilize it externally. And it takes thirty years for one to hatch."

"Wow."

"I know, right? I wonder if some Changelings might've been taken as birthstones instead of whelps. I mean, it's got to be easier to carry a rock than a squirmy baby. I know I'd already hatched by the time I was changed, because I kind of remember it, but that's probably just so we actually know stuff by the time the age pause switches over to our Familiar."

"You remember getting turned into a Changeling?"

"Kind of," said Jim again. "It hurt a lot, especially my hands because I grew an extra finger on each one. And there were other Changelings there, too, and … our Creator."

He said the last part softly. Toby took that to mean Jim didn't want to talk about it. Them. Whatever.

"… Do you remember anything from … before? Like, your first family?"

"No, that's mostly blocked out. I half-remember being warm? And some blurry noises and smells? But I don't know if any of those are real memories or just something I invented. Like, I figure one of my parents must have been blue, but I don't remember that, I just think it because I am. And I've always been really drawn to soft things, so I think one of them might've had fur and I subconsciously remember that? But I don't actually know."

Toby didn't mean to snort, really, but –

"One blue and one with fur? So, Blinky and AAARRRGGHH?"

There was a moment of silence before Jim huffed amusedly. "Well, Blinky did just give me The Talk. But if I were going to claim any troll as my dad, I'd probably say Stricklander."

"Wait, if you guys are both Changelings, doesn't that make you the same age?"

"No, no, he's, like, centuries older than me. Enrique's around my age, though."

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Bernie increased magnification and switched forms. It was a habit of hers. Trolls and humans had evolved in different lighting conditions, so troll eyes could catch a detail that human eyes could not, and vice versa.

Bular's death was tragic, of course, a deep setback to the Order's plans and an agonizing blow to the Underlord (or would be, once someone was brave enough to bear the bad news), but his remains offered a wealth of knowledge. Bernie intended to wring every scrap of information possible from the stones.

The Janus Order had not had troll remains available for study since before most of Bernie's lab equipment had been invented. Changelings who died in troll form tended to explode. Bernie had samples of the dust and was eager to see how Bular's chemical composition compared. She felt like a human paleontologist studying a mostly intact dinosaur fossil after decades working with tiny bone fragments.

First she was running a series of passive tests on the stones. More intrusive testing could wait until she and Otto and Stephan had rebuilt Bular enough that she could take samples from pre-determined areas. There could be any number of factors differentiating between what had been his horn or his stomach or his tail, and the chemical analysis would run more smoothly if she knew what she was testing.

The stones were not responsive to blacklight and showed no response to infrared other than warming up. Bernie hadn't quite dared expose Bular's remains to ultraviolet light yet – it shouldn't do anything, with the tissue already dead, but she didn't want to risk degrading the samples so early on when there was such a finite quantity. She was using infrared and ultraviolet cameras as well as a standard one to record everything.

"So far," said Bernie aloud to the video cameras, "Bular seems to be composed of a sedimentary version of the same mineral that comprises Changeling dust. That suggests we aren't as different from unaltered trolls as previously believed. Possibly the changes are more noticeable in live tissue."

She wished he had been willing to provide tissue samples while still alive. The Son of Gunmar had made it clear in life he was not interested in indulging Changeling curiosity. Decades ago, Bernie developed a formula that should work as a sunblock for trolls, but the Gumm-Gumm prince had taken offence at the request that he, as the one sun-sensitive troll available, consider testing it, and the Changeling scientist had gotten broken ribs and a broken wrist for the 'insult'. After that, Bernie stopped asking for the troll's aid in experiments.

Between comparing Bular's remains to Changeling dust and cross-referencing that with some of the old notes recovered from the Pale Lady's workshops, Bernie might be able to reverse-engineer how Changelings were made. Their numbers were limited with their Lady currently inaccessible, but if new technology could substitute for raw magical power, then their numbers could grow once more.

Bernie would meditate at the gramophone to seek Her Ladyship's approval before actually trying to recraft the formula, of course. Bernie Sturges was a lot of things, but not a blasphemer.

(Bernie thought of herself as 'Bernie' all the time, regardless of how her gender fluctuated, but classically-gendered names like 'Bernard' and 'Bernadette' were a useful verbal shorthand, to sidestep having 'the pronoun conversation' with every casual acquaintance and speed up telling those 'in the know' which pronouns to use at the moment.)

She switched back to human form to write a few more notes. She liked having a written record as well as audio-visual.

"The fact these remains are Bular's, specifically, raises another possible field of comparison," Bernie mused. "A comparison to the Eye of Gunmar may yield vital data, not only on how our eyes work, but on how genetic ties manifest in living stone. It is hypothetically possible some Changelings are related and don't know it."

Maybe siblings, maybe cousins, maybe an aunt or uncle and their niece or nephew.

"Will investigate the vault and determine which security measures I need to override to access the sample."

Bernie had been living on the base since Stricklander had sent the Order into deep cover. She was between human identities at the moment, so her disappearance would draw less notice in the world above than trying to slap a new cover together in a rush. Fortunately, she maintained a small apartment just off the lab, in case of projects which couldn't be left unsupervised.

The base had three underground stories. Bernie's lab was on the middle one, but off to the side so that any explosions could be contained by the emergency blast doors and nothing was directly above or below.

The vault was down a level and on the opposite side of the base. It had been built to store the gramophone, before it was determined that the magical wards interfered with the signal, pieces of Killahead Bridge, before construction had begun, and two other artifacts which were considered too vital to move about without direct instructions from the Order's head or the Pale Lady herself.

Bernie swapped her safety glasses for a mask and brought a few of her smaller scanners along. If she could get into the vault, she could run some tests on Gunmar's Eye before reporting the security system's weaknesses.

To her surprise and concern, the Order's head was already standing at the vault's door.

"Stricklander," she greeted. Bernie never bothered with introducing herself to him, because –

"Dr Sturges."

– Stricklander always called her that. She had a few doctorates by now, from decades infiltrating human universities to keep up with their scientific progress. 'Bernadette Sturges' was not so accredited as 'Bernard Sturges' yet, but the degrees under Bernadette's name were more recent.

"I'd like to access the Eye of Gunmar," she said, because it wasn't like Bernie had any other excuse for being on this level and Stricklander usually supported her studies.

"… Why?"

"I've been examining Bular's remains," which he'd know if he'd read the reports she'd been leaving on his desk, but he might not have been to his on-base office recently, "and I wanted to do a comparative study. Since we know they're related."

Stricklander frowned.

"You have fortunate timing, Dr Sturges," he said after a moment. "The Eye of Gunmar is about to be moved to a classified location." More classified than a secret underground bunker? Well, if Stricklander was the only one to know where the new location was, that would be more secure than a vault most Changelings knew about. "I see no problem with you studying it under supervision for the next few hours."

Opening the vault was a complicated affair. There was a Changeling lock, of course, to keep out any other trolls or humans who somehow got into the base, and then a combination lock, and then some other form of combination lock involving floating, glowing runes that Stricklander rearranged into what was probably a password – Bernie could read trollish but it still looked like gibberish – and then some kind of scanner for which Stricklander changed to his troll form.

Inside was dark and surprisingly spacious. Perhaps not surprising, considering it had held about half of the Bridge at one time. There was a shelf along the back wall, which held two boxes, kept a respectful distance apart from one another. Each box sent a faint light up the wall and to the ceiling.

Bernie was mildly surprised that both boxes were open. One would think they'd be kept sealed so that, on the off-chance a thief made it this far, they might still grab the wrong artifact.

One, the Eye of Gunmar, glowed blue. The other, the Inferna Copula, glowed golden.

"I should study the Inferna Copula as well," said Bernie. "Not now, but at some point. Legend says it's a metamorphosed piece of Angor Rot's own flesh, which he sacrificed as an offering to our Lady when he swore himself to her service."

Stricklander took the box with the eye. Bernie stayed near the vault door, ready to bolt for it if her presence set off another security system.

"He could avenge Bular," Bernie realized. "He's slain Trollhunters before, in our Lady's name."

Stricklander let out a sharp but quiet gasp. He handed Bernie the eye box and took the ring box.

"I think I had best keep this close for now."

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Walter was nearly positive that Dr Sturges was working with Otto. Sturges hadn't been told the full story of Bular's demise, or they wouldn't be so open with Walt about their current project.

As Sturges examined Gunmar's Eye, talking to the various recording devices set up in the lab, Walt examined Sturges' notes. Sturges had copies of papers recovered from several of the Pale Lady's workshops, which the Order's linguistics and cryptography team had done their best to decipher and translate. Sturges was no linguist, and only a hobbyist cryptographer, but insisted on having copies of the original pages as well as translations.

The papers Walt was studying had to do with Angor Rot.

Angor had turned to the Pale Lady midway through Gunmar's first war for the surface. A few history records that Jim had recovered from Blinkous' library claimed Angor had been a hero, once, defending trollkind from the Gumm-Gumms. Perhaps that was what had driven Angor to Morgana, seeking the same power that her rival Merlin had bestowed on the Trollhunters?

If so, it seemed she had gifted him with even greater power, because at least four Trollhunters were confirmed to have died at Angor's hands, and half a dozen more were rumoured.

Angor was controlled by the Inferna Copula, the ring which contained his soul. Wielding it was hazardous; every past bearer had died gruesomely, either as or shortly after it was taken from them. The assassin himself had vanished centuries ago, supposedly having been imprisoned by Merlin, but the Janus Order had acquired his ring.

Walt could not let Otto get it. If there was a chance Angor Rot was still alive, Otto could set him against Jim, and Walter himself.

But, looking at Morgana's notes about her Champion, and the weak and sentimental heart which brought him to her … If Angor were alive, and Walt were to get to him first …

It would be a foolish quest; more foolish than the quest for the Triumbric Stones, considering that those, at least, were known to still exist.

Walt couldn't just pack up and leave Arcadia. It wouldn't look entirely suspicious to his fellow Changelings, for him to up and leave the town guarded by a Trollhunter strong enough to slay Bular, but it could incite panic and mass exodus.

And who could he leave in charge in his stead, who wouldn't be killed or overthrown but also wouldn't overthrow him? Nomura, maybe. 'A last chance to redeem yourself after the Bridge was stolen from your post.' But could he trust her that much? Could he afford to put her in the position of becoming the scapegoat if anything went wrong with the Order in his absence?

He couldn't send someone else to retrieve Angor Rot. That only raised the same questions, of who wouldn't either be killed or keep the assassin in their own service.

And could Walt really afford to take away the token protection his presence gave Jim against Otto, even for a short while in exchange for a chance to acquire a more powerful ally?

He put down the papers and examined the ring. Gold, chunky but spiky; its bulk reminded him of some Borgia rings he'd seen or worn in the past, with their hidden compartments for poison. He couldn't find any mechanisms. More out of curiosity than anything, Walt tried it on.

Vines and moss and the crushing weight of stone. Sunlight filtered through gaps in an old roof, not quite able to reach him and burn him. Arms and legs spread uncomfortably and held firm, even after centuries. Tired. Hungry. Thirsty.

Walt pulled the ring off quickly. He didn't have a perfect internal compass, but the connection between the ring and the troll had created one, if only for a moment.

Angor Rot was alive, and Walter Strickler knew exactly where to find him.

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Previous Chapter (Barbara agrees to let Jim move back home)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Toby warns Claire, Mary, and Darci that Barbara wants to tell their families about trolls)

In the episode It's About Time, Jim gets a vision of where Angor is when he puts on the Inferna Copula. This 'inner compass' idea explains how he found him so quickly when Arcadia has a lot of sewer tunnels and there was no reason Jim should recognize that particular spot, and in this fic I'm using it to explain how Strickler finds Angor without Otto also along on the journey.

I'm ignoring the spinoff novel which claimed Angor made his deal with Morgana after the Battle of Killahead, because I don't think that makes nearly as much sense as it being a pre-Killahead thing. Angor specifically mentions that Gunmar's war ravaged his village. It could be interpreted as Angor wanting to protect his vulnerable displaced/rebuilding people after the war is over, but I think his phrasing makes the most sense if Gunmar is still free to threaten them further. 

I am keeping, at least as a rumour, the spinoff novel’s claim that Merlin was the one to chain Angor up and trap him under a pile of rubble in an isolated building.

[ezatluba]

Say hello to handstanding spotted skunks, 'the acrobats of the skunk world'

By Ashley Strickland

September 1, 2021

There are more spotted skunks than previously believed, according to new research.Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter.

At first whiff, you might think all skunks are the same. Not so.

Meet spotted skunks, "the acrobats of the skunk world." Scientists have discovered that there are more of these species than they thought, according to new research.More recently, the agreed-upon number was four. But a new study published Wednesday in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution said there are seven spotted skunk species.

"North America is one of the most-studied continents in terms of mammals, and carnivores are one of the most-studied groups," said study author Adam Ferguson, Negaunee collections manager of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago. "Everyone thinks we know everything about mammalian carnivore systematics, so being able to redraw the skunk family tree is very exciting."

Spotted skunks are the smaller relatives of the common striped skunk. About the size of a squirrel, these elusive carnivores live across North America. And when the time comes to scare off a predator, these little guys perform a handstand and kick out their back legs.

A spotted skunk is shown doing its signature handstand."When they're stressed, they bounce up onto their forelimbs and then kick out their hind limbs, puff their tail up, and they actually can walk towards the predator, like basically making them look bigger and scarier," Ferguson said.Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Fareed Zakaria global analysis newsletter.

The skunks typically drop back down to all fours in order to take deadly aim and control their vile-smelling spray. Their small stature doesn't cause these creatures to back down from a fight, either.

A study released in 2013 included a video of a Western spotted skunk handstanding and facing off with a mountain lion over a deer carcass. For reference, spotted skunks typically weigh less than 2 pounds (0.9 kilogram).It's just another example of their boldness, something he admires about skunks in general, Ferguson said.While the common striped skunk has made its presence known in urban areas, as well as its natural habitats, striped skunks haven't made the same inroads and so largely remain out of sight. These "ecologically cryptic" creatures live in dense environments and remote areas and seem less adaptable to urbanization than their larger, striped counterparts, Ferguson said. Given their agility, spotted skunks are great climbers, and they are a lot more carnivorous than other skunks, feasting on bird eggs, lizards, snakes and rodents. Great horned owls are their main predator.The fact that spotted skunks are so good at keeping a low profile makes them harder to study. Since the discovery of the first spotted skunk in 1758, scientists have questioned just how many species exist. Over the years, the differences observed between some spotted skunks led researchers to believe there were as few as two species and as many as 14. Making the determination that there are seven species came down to analyzing genetic data from spotted skunks. But first, Ferguson needed specimens to study. Trapping skunks isn't the easiest job -- Ferguson and his colleagues made six trips to Mexico while researching spotted skunks and never caught one. And if you do trap one, you're bound to be sprayed. "We call it the smell of success because it means we've actually encountered one, which is the goal ultimate goal," Ferguson said.Ferguson was inspired to make "wanted" posters and distribute them across central Texas in feed stores and areas where ranchers and trappers operate. The posters described the need for any spotted skunks that may have been trapped or found as roadkill and showed photos of the creatures. The researchers offered to come pick up the skunk specimens and store them in a designated "skunk freezer."

A "wanted" poster asks for roadkill skunk specimens to be used in research.The researchers also relied on specimens in museum collections, which included spotted skunks found in Central America and the Yucatan. In the end, they had 203 spotted skunk specimens to use for the study and extract DNA. The genetic data revealed that some of the skunks, once considered to be the same species, were in fact very different. "I was able to extract DNA from century-old museum samples, and it was really exciting to see who those individuals were related to. It turns out that one of those was a currently unrecognized, endemic species in the Yucatan,'' said study author Molly McDonough, a biology professor at Chicago State University and research associate at the Field Museum, in a statement.

One of the new species from the study is the Yucatan spotted skunk, which is about the size of a squirrel and only found in the Yucatan Peninsula. The scientists also describe the Plains spotted skunk, whose population has been declining over the last century and has been suggested as an endangered species."The study wouldn't have been possible without the museum specimens we had," Ferguson said. "The only reason we were able to get sequences from the Yucatan were museum specimens that were collected 60 or 70 years ago."Understanding individual species of skunks can help scientists learn more about something unique to these creatures: their reproductive biology. Spotted skunks may breed in the fall, but they don't give birth until the spring. In other words, their reproductive system purposefully delays implanting the egg inside the uterus.

Adam Ferguson (far left) and guests are pictured in the Field Museum's collections with spotted skunk specimens."It just sits in suspension for a while," Ferguson said. "We want to know why some species have delayed implantation and others don't, and figuring out how these different species of skunks evolved can help us do that."

Skunks have come a long way since they first appeared in the fossil record 25 million years ago, evolving and splitting into different species by responding to the climate change caused by the ice age. Knowing more about spotted skunks can also help conservation efforts to protect these animals. Skunks have their own role to play within the ecosystem, consuming fruit and defecating seeds that help with the dispersal of plants, as well as preying on crop pests and rodents, Ferguson said.

[mariosargitisdesigns]

Guerilla Advocacy Campaign Process Blog: Climate Change

ART225 Graphic Design

1. Project Proposal

My design campaign is themed around the topic of human-caused global warming and climate change. I hope for people to become more aware of the damage caused by the human population towards the environment, as well as understand the prevalence of climate change by addressing its issues and consequences. It is important because the growing human population continues to depend and harm the environment to meet resource needs. This has caused the mass emission of greenhouse gases, which has proven to cause environmental damage in many natural ecosystems, species, and even the resources we depend on. It is important because it affects our every-day lives, but we have carried a deliberately evasive mindset in addressing and tackling the issue of climate change and global warming. I believe by actively integrating modern and minimalistic design, people will be attracted to ways that they can decrease the effects of climate change, simply by shifting small every-day activities that can go a long way collectively. 

I want to present shocking information about climate change such as the rise of global temperature, its effects in species extinction and ecosystems, as well as other “attention grabbers.”  I will integrate logos and general designs that are connected to one another but also provide some individual attention, in order to accurately talk about the issue, its effects, why it's important, and what people can do to help the population combat it. There are many species that have been or are currently showing signs of possible extinction. I think documenting animals and some relevant facts about animal conservation and the general scope of their survival during climate change will put a bigger emphasis in the effects of the issue, as well as providing a good connection towards any external links the viewer can access that will allow them expert research to further educate them about this issue. I will allow my brand to be a cohesive brand/look by using color relationships to enhance the looks of the brand, in hopes to make it more in line with the contents of the campaign for flow, as well as integrate appropriate design elements that will further expand the brand to be approachable. This will effectively translate the purpose and meanings of the poster and hopefully become a good inspiration for the viewer to cause action in the climate crisis. I will also put a big emphasis on the individual and renewable energy because they represent hope during this issue, and making them stand out in the campaign will accurately point out the importance of involvement and participation in such times. 

I will be further expanding my designs, aiming to add simplistic graphics that will represent specific aspects of climate change, each important in its impacts and longevity of importance while tackling the most important issue of our lifetime. 

2. Research

Topic: Climate Change

What are the causes of climate change? 

WWF: Causes of Climate Change

The main causes of climate change are: 

Increased use of fossil fuels

Deforestation

Increasingly intensive agriculture

Rise of global temperatures

Humanity’s increased use of fossil fuels – such as coal, oil and gas to generate electricity, run cars and other forms of transport, and power manufacturing and industry

Deforestation – because living trees absorb and store carbon dioxide

Increasingly intensive agriculture – which emits greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide

From 1906-2005, the average global temperature rose by 0.74ºC, with most of that warming occurring since 1970. By 2015, the average global temperature had warmed by over 1ºC since pre-industrial times. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years on record have been in 21st century.

NRDC: Global Climate Change: What You Need to Know

- Climate change is a significant variation of average weather conditions

- Tracked and recorded through paleoclimatology data from natural sources such as ice cores, tree rings, corals, and ocean and lake sediments. 

- Caused by the refraction of the sun’s rays.

- The prevention of the absorption of the sun’s rays by greenhouse gases can have various climate effects.

- Human caused greenhouse gases is the main contributor to climate change and global warming, adding a heating layer on the sky that resides and warms many natural processes. 

- Greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, SO2) have contributed to a 40% increase in the atmosphere’s share of greenhouse gases since pre-industrial times. 

What are the direct consequences of climate change? 

Climate Change - Signs from the Planet

Since 1880, global temperatures have risen 2.1 degrees F. 

Nineteen of the warmest years in human history occurred since 2000.

Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years.

A 13.1 length decrease of global ice melt occurs every decade.

Arctic sea ice shrank at its lowest in 2012. 

Arctic polar ice caps are losing mass, according to satellite data.

Climate Change - Sings from the Planet - Facts

- Average precipitation has risen and is expected to rise, while winters and weather conditions are getting more harsh.

- Rising temperatures will decrease soil moisture, and crop production.

- Sea levels have risen due to glacial ice melt, and combined with tides to cause regional flooding,

= Increased heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. Declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, health impacts in cities due to heat, and flooding and erosion in coastal areas are additional concerns.

IUCN: Species and Climate Change

The ways in which climate change is expected to affect species are multiple and complex, but are generally thought to include:

- Loss or degradation of important habitats and microhabitats.

- Changing of environmental thresholds e.g. temperature, water availability/quality beyond those that a species can tolerate.

- Loss of important interactions between two unrelated species, or the arrival of new, negative ones e.g. disease.

- The disruption of environmental cues (e.g. for breeding or migration).

- The direct loss of individual organisms, or even populations, as a result of extreme events.

 USA TODAY: One-third of all plant and animal species could be extinct in 50 years, study warns. 

- Over 1 million species are at risk of extinction due to human activities.

- About 50% of the species had local extinctions if maximum temperatures increased by more than 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and up to 95% if temperatures increased by more than 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit. 

 Schleuning et al. 2016.

- Animal species that interact with a low diversity of plant species have narrow climatic niches and are most vulnerable to climate change.

- Impacts of climate change on biodiversity can be amplified via extinction cascades from plants to animals in ecological networks.

- Species traits that favour biotic generalization, for example, large body size, may also favour the widespread distribution of animal species across a wide climatic range. Thus, climatic niche breadth and biotic specialization may be indirectly linked via species traits. 

 Climate change and third world countries:

- IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts climate change will worsen human health conditions such as malaria, and other insect-borne infections, especially in tropical region.

- The IPCC report estimates that approximately 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be without adequate water and will face food shortages by 2020, as crop productivity will decline by about 50 per cent. Rising temperatures could also result in food shortages for 130 million people in Asia.

- Increased global warming can also pose a threat to national security, affecting food security, which, in turn, can lead to resource conflicts. 

 What can be done to decrease the effects of/can combat climate change? 

NRDC: How can you stop global warming? 

1. Voice opinions and bring concerns about climate change directly to elected officials.

2. Power essential shelter with renewable energy resources (solar, wind).

3. Weatherize and invest in energy-efficient home improvements.

4. Investing in energy-efficient appliances.

5. Reduce water waste.

6. Produce less food waste.

7. Conserve energy.

8. Drive/transport energy efficiently.

9. Rethinking public transit such as trains, airplanes, and automobiles.

10. Decreasing carbon footprint by reducing the use of products that produce greenhouse gases to be made. 

BBC. Ten Simple Ways to Act on Climate Change.

- Limiting the use of fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal and replacing them with cleaner sources of energy such as renewables.

- “We need to cut CO2 emissions almost in half (45%) by the end of the next decade,”

- Changing the running of industries and market production policies. 

- Going car-free or effectively using more cleaner alternatives is the most effective approach against climate change on a social level.

- Renewables such as solar and wind are becoming cheaper across the world. 

- Solar, geothermal, bioenergy, hydropower and onshore wind, will be on par with or cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020. Some are already more cost-effective

- The cost of utility-scale solar panels has fallen 73% since 2010

By reducing your consumption of animal protein by half, you can cut your diet's carbon footprint by more than 40%.

Works Cited

Denchak, Melissa. How Can You Stop Global Warming. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. July 17 2017. April 19 2021. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-you-can-stop-global-warming

Denchack, Melissa. Global Climate Change: What You Need to Know. Natural Resources Defense Council. February 23 2017. April 20 2021.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-climate-change-what-you-need-know

Diego Arugedas Ortiz. Ten Simple Ways to Act on Climate Change. BBC Future. November 4 2018. April 19 2021. 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181102-what-can-i-do-about-climate-change

Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. April 19th 2021. https://climate.nasa.gov/

Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Facts. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. April 19th 2021. https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

International Union for Conservation of Nature. Species and Climate Change. April 19th 2021. https://www.iucn.org/theme/species/our-work/species-and-climate-change 

Rice, Doyce. One-third of all plant and animal species could be extinct in 50 years, study warns. USA Today. February 14 2020. April 19 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/14/climate-change-study-plant-animal-extinction/4760646002/ 

Schleuning, M., J. Frund, and C. Hof. 2016. Ecological networks are more sensitive to plants than to animal extinction under climate change. Nature Communications: 13965

United Nations. The Health Effects Of Global Warming: Developing Countries Are The Most Vulnerable. April 19 2021. https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/health-effects-global-warming-developing-countries-are-most-vulnerable 

World Wide Fund for Nature. Causes of Climate Change. April 19 2021. https://www.wwf.org.nz/what_we_do/climateaction/causes_of_climate_change/#:~:text=The%20main%20causes%20of%20climate,absorb%20and%20store%20carbon%20dioxide

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Growing to death: A punctuated extinction (part 1 of 3)

Most of our discussion papers have a purposeful focus upon our embedded thinking patterns that cause vast ruin to our societies and our ecosystem1. Today weakness in thought leadership are reflected in the aversion of both impotent governments and voracious corporations to adopt real empathetic change. The advanced warnings from wide research areas, like for example, “limits to growth” - published more than 30 years ago, expose our unspoken approval to overshoot the carrying capacity of earth. A destructive pattern of human development and exploitation, called the Anthropocene. It represents our greatest embarrassment yet – a human induced extinction event?

To put this into perspective, earth’s geological records contain evidence of 5 major extinction events1, each time killing off most life forms when they occur. An extinction event that struck in the Cretaceous period, was popularised for wiping out the dinosaurs. Indeed, earth’s fossil records contain punctuated equilibria (evidence of massive and rapid evolutionary change), as part of its geological storyline1. The Anthropocene is now considered to equal these events in terms of the scale of destruction – meaning humans have over-exploited earths capacities to a point where it equals an extinction event.

Unsurprisingly, much research warns about selfish, mercenary development themes causing ruin and collapse of ecosystems1, 3. A central message being we immediately cease and desist with lies and deceptions of constant growth models and theories, since it purposefully ignores the natural limitations of our ecosystem2. Today still, prevailing development models remain mechanistic, inward and selfish replicas of high consumption. Concerns have been raised as far back as WW1, called the rise of the synthetic world4, offering detailed analysis of pollution, urban migration, and chemical agriculture4. It argued for holism and systemic integrative thought and action4. Most essentially, it described the drive to dominate the natural world as a destructive byproduct of social grading and elitism4. Insight from this research promote practices of systemic principles of non-hierarchical, organic societies, having features like: interdependence; usufruct; unity-in-diversity; complementarity; irreducible minimum (principle where communities are responsible for meeting their members most basic needs)9. This directly opposes modern industrialisation themes that only promote large, grand, scaled, factory type solutions, be it in sectors of education, infrastructure, health, farming, etc. Critically, our business and economic thinking remain the driver of this flawed mentality of “big is better” – which automatically embed solutions that remove localised jobs, causing ecological ruin via concentration and value chain domination1.

 A case in point is today’s factory-type cattle farming that generate carbon emissions, comparable to the transport sector10. Mega-production livestock has become a major contributor to global warming (14.5% of total emissions)10. Although emission comparisons between livestock and transport may suffer from various biases (lobby groups, corporate research, etc.); whilst comparison methods are often flawed (e.g. comparing direct emissions from one sector to both direct and indirect emissions of another)11 - the point however is that both sectors (transport and livestock) are serious contributors to global warming. This is because of “big-is-better” type central economic planning, where mechanistic leadership advance faulty development models having weakly constructed solutions like technology and green capitalism? Ideas that remain rooted in continuous growth and consumption, requiring us to consume excessively, without thought. The crucial affair is excessive consumption, so fanatically promoted by both corporations and governments. We see it in stock markets whereby listed companies opt to use false data and fake news to prop up their share prices; we see it in product design where we are compelled to continuously consume by replacing and upgrading gadgets, cars, clothes, etc.; we see it in the grand, extravagant lifestyles promoted to us all?

  References:

1.     Udemans, F., 2008, The golden thread: escaping socio-economic subjugation, an experiment in applied complexity science, Authorhouse UK;

2.     Smith, J.W., 1989, The World’s Wasted Wealth: the political economy of waste, New World’s Press, 1989, pp.44,45;

3.     Turner, G., and Alexander, C., 2014, The Guardian: Limits to growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse;

4.     Tokar, B., 2008, On Bookchin’s Social Ecology and its Contributions to Social Movements; Capitalism Nature Socialism Volume 19, Number 1;

5.     Randers, J., 2012, The Real Message of The Limits to Growth, A Plea for Forward-Looking Global Policy, GAIA, 21/2, 2012: 102;

6.     Tawney, R.H., 1920, The Acquisitive Society, Quotes taken from the 1920 edition (http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/33741), published by Harcourt, Brace and Company; and, Tawney, R.H., 1960, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._H._Tawney;

7.     Brown, H., 1954, The challenge of man’s future, Engineering and Science Vil.17 (6), pp.22-32, Caltech office of Relations; http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechES:17.6.brown; Available: Folinsbee, R. E., and Leech, A.P., 1974, Energy – Challenge of man’s future (Part I), Journal of the Geological Association of Canada, Vol. 1 (1);

8.     Quinn, S., 2018, Global Species Extinction: Humans Are Now the Asteroid Hitting the Earth, Indigenous populations are taking the lead in protecting the environment, Global Research, July 31, 2018;

9.     Dawson, J., Jackson, R., Norberg-Hodge. H., 2010, Economic Key: Gaian Economics – living well within planetary limits, Permanent Publications, First edition, © 2010, Gaia Education, ISBN 978185623056 8;

10.  Grossi , G., Goglio, P., Vitali, A., Williams, A.G., 2018, Livestock and climate change: impact of livestock on climate and mitigation strategies, Animal Frontiers: Volume 9, Issue 1, January 2019, Pages 69–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfy034;


11.  Mottet, A., and Steinfeld, H., 2018, Cars or livestock: which contribute more to climate change? FAO Tuesday, 18 September 2018 08:36 GMT;

12.  Cornes, R. and Sandler T., 1996, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods, 2nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;

13.  Kocks, A., 2005, The Financing of UN Peace Operations – An Analysis from a Global Public Good Perspective, INEF Report, Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden der Universit��tDuisburg-Essen / Campus Duisburg, Heft 77;

14.  Chen, L ; Evans, T. & Cash, R., 1999, Health as a Global Public Good, In: Global Public Goods: International Co-operation in the 21st Century, Kaul, I; Grunberg, I & Stern, M (Ed.), New York: Oxford University Press; Cornes, R. and Sandler T., 1996, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods, 2nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Sandler, T., 1997, Global Challenges: An Approach to Environmental, Political and Economic Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: chapter 5;

15.  Global footprint network, 2019, (https://www.footprintnetwork.org);

[gogocrazygo]

It is human instinct to put out a fire or at least call for help when a house is burning, as we want to save what we can of it.

It is human instinct to help someone, sometimes even a stranger, when they are in desperate need, as we thrive from self-satisfaction of being of help to someone, and being perceived as thoughtful and compassionate.

So what makes us human? It is not just our built and physical capability. What truly make us distinguished from other living creatures on this earth are our minds. The capacity of our brains is greater than of any other species in animal kingdom, therefore our senses and logical reasoning are stronger. Imagination, creativity and being able to analyse situations and problem solve enabled us to build the world we are living in now. We are all so proud of our human achievements throughout history. We are also very compassionate in nature. We feel emotions towards objects like food, situations like falling in love or war, other people and their impact on our lives, and most of us appreciate and cherish animals and the nature surrounding us. So why is it that our so called Home, Planet Earth and natural world is slowly shrinking, sinking, burning and warming before our eyes?

Barack Obama himself said “Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now,”, and with the amount of scientific support out there it is just no sensible reason for us as human beings to turn our backs on this crisis. Without our home we cannot thrive and continue to grow as we have been.

Growing up in an average household, global warming was mentioned in many family conversations. We tried recycling and being more aware but it was something that I never thought we would have much impact on at all. It is only now that I have been living on my own for one and a half years, I thought to myself that “yes there is an issue, and I am very aware of it”, but what can I do about it? The government and economy are way out of my control and while some people might be aware of the issue, but life is just too busy so we brush this topic under the rug. My budget is certainly not that great so I’m very cautious of my outgoings, and I’m also busy all the time, so how can I possibly be more environmentally friendly?

“No one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experiences” is what my man David Attenborough has said, which is why he is so good at showing us all through various or media how amazing this planet is and why we have to protect it.

I love this planet; I love what it has given me, the surrounding nature, the animals, my family, the people that I meet, and I love the freedom of speech and expression. Reviewing my current personal situation got me thinking, I have to do something or at least try and slowly start making changes as I cannot look away anymore.

If you already know enough about pollution but want to know more about what you can do to reduce waste at your household, skip to the Easy Swaps section. If you want to find some interesting facts continue reading on 🙂

  Global Warming and Pollution

UN reports that from 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature increased by 0.85°C. Oceans have warmed and the melting ice is making the sea levels rise. From 1901 to 2010, the global average sea level rose by 19 cm which is quiet alarming.

UN also states that “Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that by the end of this century global mean temperature will continue to rise above the pre-industrial level. The world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue. Average sea level rise is predicted to be 24–30 cm by 2065 and 40–63 cm by 2100 relative to the reference period of 1986–2005.” Such a high rise in sea levels will make certain Islands such as Atolls, Maldives and Tuvalu hard to visit or live on due to coastal erosion. Other coastal cities like Miami will be affected and so will millions of people in residence.

When we talk about pollution, one of the first things that come to our minds is greenhouse gas emission from combustion of fossil fuels in cars, buildings, factories, power plants and burning fossil fuels in manufacturing processes etc. Here are some less popular facts that have a huge impact as well:

Population growth alongside the standards of living. In most MEDCs we have more money to spend on we don’t even know what as we have sooo many choices. When consumption grows, the waste and plastic pollution grows it’s as simple as that.

Methane released from landfills, natural gas and petroleum industries are a huge factor, but not as big as the methane released from food agriculture/ farming. This is mainly caused by grazing animals releasing gasses (yes this means #farts) on meat and dairy farms. We also have nitrous oxide released from fertilizers and gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes. Other things in agriculture that affect pollution and global warming are logistics, land use, water and food resource use, deforestation and interfering with natural habitats. All our food manufacturing processes result in using more and more natural resources, leaving less and less behind.

Single use plastic is proving to significantly contribute to greenhouse gas emission at every stage of its life, starting from production, going into distribution and then at the end of its life where it takes between 50 and 600 years to biodegrade. Even after that, the small plastic molecules are distributed in the air and the oceans, ending up in out drinking water, fish we catch, even farm foods we consume. I don’t like the idea of slowly being poisoned to death with plastic by just eating veggies and drinking water.

  Plastic waste

Pretty city view in Amsterdam this summer surrounded by litter.

So lets’ get a couple of facts and figures out of the way, shall we?

Research shows that annual CO2 emission from plastic waste could grow up to 2.75 million tonnes by 2050. It’s in 30 years’ time guys. I’m going to be 58 and swimming in plastic waste. Lovely thought for future L

Jokes aside, plastic pollution has not only been a concern related to climate change. Recently it has been all over media, after Blue Planet 2 release in 2017, that plastic polluting our seas has an impact on the entire ocean ecosystem, our health and the natural world all over. Microplastic particles are now floating in the air and can be found from top of Mount Everest to Mariana Trench, which is the deepest ocean trench explored.

Millions of animals varying from krill, to fish, whales, birds, seals and turtles are killed from either ingesting plastic, or by simply being stuck in a plastic object unable to get free, suffocating to death. The UKs leading marine charity MCS organises yearly beach clean-ups to make sure we reduce the risk of animals and habitats being affected by the pollution on our coasts. You can get involved in their work by clicking here and help make change.

By simply identifying which plastics are recyclable and which ones are not, we can reduce plastic pollution dramatically. But the main goal is to reduce single use plastic buying. Less plastic in household means less plastic in our lands and in our seas.

BBC has done a brilliant, well researched and eye opening piece on the Plastic Pollution Problem, which I highly recommend on checking out by clicking here.

As consumers we have the ENTIRE power over what goes into our household, so why not take some simple actions right now?

Easy swaps

Here are some of my personal tips and easy swaps that can help you start plastic waste reduction:

No more plastic bottles. Reusable bottles are so much better in so many ways and water should be FREE so why are you paying for it?

Bringing your own food storage pots. In case you are thinking of having a take away or a lunch at a local caff, if you know they will give you a plastic pot to serve your food in, why not give them yours? I have been doing this a lot at work with the local caff, and they were more than happy to put the food in my own food container.

Have a straw with you at all times. I also carry my small cutlery set everywhere I go. Just say no to plastic straws and cutlery. Small stuff but it adds up over the years.

Invest in an eco-friendly coffee travel mug. A lot of coffee shops like Starbucks serve their drinks in fully recyclable cups, but sometimes these are not recycled properly so it’s better to have your own. Some places even offer you money off if you bring your own mug.

Use long life bags for house shopping. This should be a norm now I think.

Using biodegradable everyday items instead of plastic options. These could be cleaning ware, natural fibres in furniture and clothes, swapping clean film for food containers or beeswax wraps and just overall using natural substances where you can. Reusing and recycling is key.

Buy loose fruit and veg as much as you can. You can save money by going to local markets and educate your little ones (if you have any) about the importance of supporting local farmers and businesses.

If meat or dairy is in your diet, go to local butchers or farmers’ market and get fresh food packed in your own containers.

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I also did some blog posts on waste reduced food shopping and some Beauty Product Swaps that might be of use.

Another thing to consider is how you commute. Public transport is a great alternative to commuting privately, whether going around the country or travelling abroad. This is something I’m currently struggling with as I love to travel. Abroad is not much of a problem as I normally depend on public transport and walk or hike, but in the UK I take my car on way too many road trips.

As a personal choice I have also decided to go on a vegan diet and have been following it as best as I can for over 2 years. By going veggie I’m reducing individual impact on:

Agricultural pollution as animal waste pollutes waterways all over the world (which ends up in our oceans).

CO2 and methane emission from land use and livestock production.

Water use e.g.: it takes 13,000l-100,000l of water to produce a kilo of beef and only 1,000l-2,000l to produce kilo of wheat.

Not consuming fish impacts on life cycle of oceans. Oceans help absorb CO2 and they also hold one of the most important organisms on the planet, the phytoplankton. These little guys are responsible of absorption of most CO2 from the atmosphere and producing 2/3rds of the oxygen we breathe in.

There are many other reasons why I believe a plant based diet helps to reduce pollution and impact on the climate change crisis, but I think this is personal choice and this topic has been covered quite well by media already with plenty of evidence supporting it.

If you haven’t already started on being more environmentally aware, I really hope that you get inspired to take small actions and then see for yourself that little changes can have a big impact on pollution, plastic waste and global warming. Just because you are one person making that change, it doesn’t mean you are alone in this. Awareness is growing and more people are trying. With a new year around the corner, this could be a perfect challenged to take on for 2020. We can all be a part of this greater movement if we just try a little.

“There is no planet B. We have to take care of the one we have.”

________ Richard Branson ________

Other useful Links:

Zero Waste Shop list

Bamboo Toothbrushes 

Sustainable cleaning products Green Scents

10 shocking facts about Plastic Pollution

Plant- based diet can fight climate change

Documentaries to watch on veganism on Netflix UK

References:

Carbon Brief. “Barak Obama on Global Warming crises” (2015): https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/obama-makes-urgent-appeal-in-alaska-for-climate-change-action

BBC. Report “Seven Charts that explains the plastic pollution problem” (2017): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42264788

United Nations. “Climate Change” (2019): https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/climate-change/

National Geographic. “Air pollution, explained” (2019) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/pollution/

National Geographic. “Causes of global warming, explained” (2019) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-causes/

Science Daily. “Failing phytoplankton, failing oxygen: Global warming disaster could suffocate life on planet Earth” (2015)  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151201094120.htm

The Guardian. “The Guardian view on the climate change summit: there is no planet B“ (2015) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/29/the-guardian-view-on-the-climate-change-summit-there-is-no-planet-b

The Guardian “Single-use plastics a serious climate change hazard, study warns“ (2019) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/15/single-use-plastics-a-serious-climate-change-hazard-study-warns

YouTube. “Sir David Attenborough’s plastic message – BBC“ (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3jEIYBFzg

BBC. “Blue Planet 2: How plastic is slowly killing our sea creatures, fish and birds“ (2017) http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/42030979/blue-planet-2-how-plastic-is-slowly-killing-our-sea-creatures-fish-and-birds

WWF. “HOW DOES PLASTIC END UP IN THE OCEAN?” https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean

National Geographic “The world’s plastic pollution crisis explained“ (2019) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/plastic-pollution/

A little piece of mind- Our Planet It is human instinct to put out a fire or at least call for help when a house is burning, as we want to save what we can of it.

[zipgrowth]

Analysis: Is Higher Ed Ready for the Tech Expectations of the Teens of 2022?

One overused catchphrase in education is that learning should be “student-centered.” But what if we took that to its logical conclusion and also made it the goal of our education technology predictions?

We’d need to consider not just what technology products students are exposed to in the classroom, but also across the rest of their lives. Especially if those students are teens, within sight of leaving K-12 and moving into higher education.

Yes, teens. Messy, motivated, tech-drenched 15 year-olds, the high school sophomores of today who will be entering college or the workforce in 2022, a mere three years from now. Not quite enough time for our robot overlords to overtake us, but both distant and soon enough to make us wonder.

What will these teens expect of tech based on their current experiences? You can extrapolate by drawing converging lines from K-12 education technology and home consumer technology to see how they might overlap and intersect. Those interactions look a lot different than just evaluating consumer or edtech trends in isolation.

The Cloudscape: Floating in a Sea of 1s and 0s

For background, just consider the previous decade of their lives. They went into first grade when Apple was rolling out the first iPad, in 2010. A year later, in their second grade, Google launched the first Chromebooks. This means they know a K-12 where the promise of mobile 1:1 school computing is becoming a reality.

More important, these kids are way beyond the tired term “digital natives.” If you want to be picky about it, there’s no one under the age of 30 who has not grown up with the internet. After all, the first web browser—Netscape Navigator—was introduced in 1993, when today’s three-decade-old adult was in preschool.

The 15-year-old today is more a sibling of cloud computing, of apps that are available from any screen, of mobile devices in many sizes and form factors that go beyond last century’s laptops. Being connected, as is required to get iPads and Chromebooks up and running, is assumed.

Two other external factors also are at play in this teen-centric cloudscape.

First is the evolving nature of education technology. It’s hard to make a case that there is still a separate edtech industry. Nearly every education “product” that a teen or teen’s teacher touches today has either a digital component or alternative. It’s not like 40 years ago in the late 1970s when a single Apple II in the back of the classroom had explorers endlessly dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

Second is the reality of what I call tech compression. There used to be a much greater separation between the worlds of consumer technology and education technology. It was, in essence, a time lag: a consumer tech product would be introduced and, if worthy, it would be about a decade before that product would start showing up in classrooms in any numbers.

There was a very obvious downside. Any student or educator walking into a tech-lagged classroom effectively stepped back in time when they entered. But the less-appreciated upside was that this slowness of centralized school evaluation and procurement could help prevent mis-purchases, of buying into a fad. The consumer market got to do the vetting before a shipment ever arrived at a district loading dock.

However, this lag began to erode when the rise of cloud computing made it possible for edtech startups to flood the market with educational applications, the expansion of broadband internet gave those apps an easy distribution channel into campuses, and an increasing number and variety of mobile devices provided them an in-school abode. Not just that, but outside of schools tech was increasingly pervasive and familiar. Add to that multiple avenues of adoption—that is, teachers bringing in tech, not just the central district office—and the tech lag compressed.

What had once been a decade from consumer introduction to classroom adoption shrank to two-to-three years. If that.

The protective effect of the earlier delay in preventing fad purchases may now be largely gone. But at the same time, teachers and teens can now walk into many schools seamlessly, with their powerful consumer tech intact. This isn’t true in all schools, especially in hard-to-cheaply-connect rural areas, despite loudly touted progress. Though EducationSuperhighway estimated last October that 40.7 million new students have been connected to high-speed access since 2013, and 98 percent of school districts now meet the Federal Communications Commission’s 100 kpbs/student goal for internet access, there remain 2.3 million more students left to connect.

In October 2018, 40.7 million more students have access to high-speed internet than did in 2013, for a total of 44.7 million students. Source: EducationSuperHighway

So today’s 15-year-olds are floating in a cloud of digital support infrastructure, suspended a bit more firmly outside of school but not necessarily flat on their faces on campus anymore, either.

What edtech and consumer trends will be significant for when a teen leaves high school?

A trend, in this case, is a series of crossover developments that have staying power. It doesn’t have to be dominant today, but it needs to show the ability to persist, grow and not be a transient fad. It should also be supported by data and demonstrable behaviors.

Let’s pick three. Not the only three, but a significant three, for three years from now.

Source: Futuresource Consulting

1. Chromebooks, Windows 10, and Apple (uh oh)

The rise of Chromebooks will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the intense increase in popularity of the inexpensive notebooks in classrooms. In 2017—the last full year for which it publicly released numbers—Futuresource Consulting estimated that Chromebooks had 58.3 percent of new mobile computing device shipments in U.S. K-12 education, a number that’s been rising since 2013 and has been above 50 percent every year since 2015. Reported percentages for quarters in 2018 appear to be similar.

District officials I’ve spoken with love the centralized cloud management and the low price points (usually $200-300) that allows them to afford, as one put it, “spares.”

This Chrome OS share, of course, has made Microsoft angry. And determined. Outside of the U.S., Futuresource stats show Windows had 62.6 percent of the K-12 mobile computing shipment market in 2017, a percentage that’s been relatively stable for several years. But in the U.S., it was only 21.6 percent in 2017, and has been just north of 20 percent every year since 2015. Microsoft has countered by working with partners over the past two years to introduce sub-$300 Windows 10 devices into the U.S., and its own Surface Go device specifically aimed at the K-8 student market.

The big loser in this battle? Apple. The early rise of the iPad peaked in 2012-13 at about 40 percent of shipments. By the end of 2017, iOS was below 15 percent. Admittedly, this is new shipments only, not installed base. But with more high school students being exposed to an increasing number of Chromebooks first, and Windows 10 devices second, this presents a challenge to Apple.

Our 15-year-olds may have less affinity for pricey Apple computing hardware by the time they get to college.

One exception: upscale wearables and headphones. Moving to today’s consumer market, tech buyers are shifting to more functional and expensive fitness devices, and it’s here where Apple shines. A different Futuresource report notes Apple is the largest connected watch vendor with 20 million units shipped in 2018, followed by Fitbit and Fossil. Apple also does well in headphones. Futuresource reported that at the end of Q4 2018, Apple AirPods dominated the “true wireless” headphone category and average selling prices for headphones overall continued to climb faster than shipments as consumers looked for more features, like wireless and noise-cancelling models.

So Apple may wind up owning teen allegiance to wearable digital accessories, even as it loses hands-on loyalty in traditional laptops and tablets.

Kids trying VR at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Photo Credit: Frank Catalano

2. Extended reality is better together

If there’s a single tech category in education where the hype is on overdrive, it’s extended reality (XR). XR is really a reality continuum: at one end is “real” reality. That’s followed by augmented reality, or digital overlays on real environments. Then there’s mixed reality, commonly (but not always) thought of as virtual objects that can be manipulated on a real background. And at the other end is virtual reality, where both the objects and environment are digital.

Despite a lot of progress at every point along this spectrum, XR is a slow-moving edtech trend. The problem is that really good, realistic XR equipment is expensive, and there is a paucity of cohesive classroom curriculum that makes use of the technology.

There are attempts to jumpstart it. ZSpace, which has played in the AR/MR part of the spectrum for several years, launched its first Windows 10 laptops integrating its technology in 2018, supporting educational activities in which students wear special untethered glasses and use a stylus to manipulate 3D objects. Microsoft, perhaps best known for its several-thousand-dollar HoloLens headset, recently made a pledge that buyers of much lower-priced Windows Mixed Reality headsets would get 25 hours of free STEM curricula. Google, Acer, Lenovo, ClassVR and many others are trying to improve the in-school experience, with Futuresource estimating there were about 20 companies at London’s Bett edtech show in January showcasing AR/VR software or hardware.

Still, the reality is extending reality costs. Today’s 15-year-olds are most likely to only have computer lab-like experiences with XR by the time they graduate. Futuresource estimates more than 15 percent of U.S. schools will have a VR “class kit” by 2021.

But what about outside of school? Some of the same hardware challenges persist. There is still a need for cheap, high-resolution, fast-refreshing, fully wireless headsets—with a wide variety of great content. Yes, hard-core gamers will buy wired or expensive headsets, as will corporate training departments (Walmart has). But as a result of the affordability-quality conundrum, many consumers are getting their first high-end experience with virtual reality in VR arcades, reflecting a trend toward location-based social VR experiences that conceptually look an awful lot like … a school computer lab.

Barring some amazing, abrupt price cuts and technology improvements, the typical XR experience of the teen entering 2022 will be less Ready Player One and more group social outing.

3. Smart speakers are an AI gateway

Source: Consumer Intelligence Research Partners

Perhaps the biggest consumer tech trend that’s virtually invisible inside the K-12 classroom today is smart speakers. But you can anticipate it will have a major impact on teen tech expectations as our very verbal artificial intelligences overwhelm homes and hotels over the next three years—and become a gateway to an entirely new tech product category.

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) tallied the U.S. installed base of smart speakers by the end of 2018 at 66 million units, up from 36 million at the end of 2017. Of the speakers people own, Amazon Echo and its offspring are 70 percent of the installed base, Google Home is 24 percent, and Apple HomePod has 6 percent. Several market research firms track smart speakers and generally align on these proportions and the remarkable rate of growth.

In case it’s not obvious, Apple’s sole expensive HomePod isn’t doing as well as the full smart speaker families that Amazon and Google offer. Globally, according to other firms like Canalys, Apple is essentially a rounding error. Yet the number of people overall with more than one speaker has boomed: CIRP pegs it at 35 percent of owners, up from 18 percent a year ago.

While Futuresource earlier found that, as purchases of smart speakers have moved from early adopters to the mainstream, the most popular uses clustered more toward music and information. But increasingly, these speakers’ reach has also extended in a variety of ways.

Parents, for example, are being pitched the Echo Dot Kids Edition. Amazon’s Alexa Fund has invested in startups that target kids at home. One, Bamboo Learning, interactively teaches music theory and math. A second, Novel Effect, provides sound effects and background music for parents who read certain books out loud to their children at home. So even though understandable privacy concerns may keep smart speakers out of classrooms, kids at home are hearing voices for education.

Hotels and dorm rooms also are installing smart speakers as standard equipment. Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality initiative is putting Echo Dots in several Marriott hotel brands, including Aloft, Westin, Autograph and St. Regis, complete with a list of commands they’re pre-programmed to handle. For college housing, St. Louis University is tucking Dots into every student residence after Arizona State University already did so for an engineering student residence.

Alexa at your service in hotels, and many other places. Photo Credit: Frank Catalano

Now add a screen. And when you do, you’ve edged into the territory of true virtual assistants. One Google Home Hub application in use at hotels in Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York City applies “Interpreter Mode” to provide visual and verbal real-time translation, of 27 languages, between non-English speaking hotel guests and staff.

Futuresource estimates that home consumer electronics of all kinds with built-in voice assistants shipped 119 million units worldwide in 2018. That’s expected to reach 504 million units by 2022, a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent.

While smart speakers may not be in a high school classroom for various good reasons, voice assistants are in every other part of a teen’s world. By 2022, they’re likely to be as much of a background expectation, as fast and pervasive internet access is today.

Not a straight line to the future

Taken together, just these three trends paint a different picture of what 2022’s incoming college freshman is likely to expect in tech, than just by focusing on what’s happening at the institution level.

Of course, a lot can upend even a three-year forecast. All it might take for wearables would be a major, health data-related privacy breach. It’s also not possible to predict a truly dramatic technology leap that could knock everything sideways, either by itself or in combination with a second new development, such as how smartphones and broadband internet intersected a decade ago.

But it’s instructive to focus less on the technology and where it’s used, and more on the individual that’s using tech across environments. Over the next three years, that average 15-year-old may know extended reality as a primarily social or group activity, will have less classroom exposure to Apple products, and be ready to accept smart speakers with their voice assistants as a transitional step to full virtual assistants.

And if you’re still wondering about our robot overlords and where they fit in—well, what do you think the current K-12 boom in coding is for?

Analysis: Is Higher Ed Ready for the Tech Expectations of the Teens of 2022? published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING LANGUAGES

Their reputation with programmers used to C. File:///home/patrick/Documents/programming/python%20projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/ind. It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch. But it certainly wasn't true, and hadn't been true for centuries, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be bad for your career to say that the graph of the wise person would be puzzled and even slightly contemptuous if they told a VC one plus one is two, because what other people thought of them. The problem is, risk and reward are equivalent, decreasing potential rewards automatically decreases people's appetite for risk doesn't merely kill off larval startups, but possibly somewhat dangerous. Copyright owners tend to focus on that. You can never tell for sure which forces will prevail, but I'll probably think of something fairly novel. Good design uses symmetry. Founders who fail quickly tend to blame themselves. But this is old news to Lisp programmers.

The problem with not having the. There are two main reasons. What saves you from being mistreated in future rounds. A notation for code using trees of symbols and constants. They make something moderately appealing and have decent initial growth. The App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers used to be like a body cavity search by someone with a clear plan for the future. 0 b or gethash word bad 0 unless g b 5 max.

But markets are good at that kind of space. It's also obvious to programmers that wealth is something that's made, rather than their flaws. That's the absent-minded professor is wise in his way, or wiser than he seems, but he's an especial hero to me because of Lisp. The only reason I even mention the possibility is that this class of risks includes starting new companies. But that test is not as selfish as it sounds. What I've just described is an acquisition by a public company now. I think you should always do this when they can. I've tried to do in other languages.

Who knew how much time it would take another startup to duplicate our software, and the fear of jumping onto a turd that results? But those aren't the only places that do. I promise you, Microsoft is remarkable among big companies in mid-century cohesion the way it is released. Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the Internet is the primary medium. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Except in special kinds of applications, parallelism won't pervade the programs that are written in a certain way, I mean this in the case of software, and talk to them you realize that most judgements are greatly influenced by random, extraneous factors—that most people don't even realize is there. They'd probably vary in size by orders of magnitude. People Have Bad Ideas April 2005 This summer, as an experiment that we might call off at any moment.

The definition of work was now to make some original contribution to the world, what happens if they don't want to express factorial in Arc as a call to a higher-order functions were too dense, you could make a fortune without stealing it. If the same person does both, they'll inevitably mumble downwards at the computer screen instead of talking clearly at the audience. Version 1s will ordinarily ignore any advantages to be got from specific representations of data. Nearly everyone's is. As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will be the last word I'd use to make it so that people could only get in the way of seeing a work of art: biases you bring from your own circumstances, and tricks played by the artist. You in another. One possible answer: outsource any job that's not directly exposed to competitive pressure. Does Web 2. The version on the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers used to be.

Often as not a startup guy. How lucky that someone so powerful is so benevolent. Their tactics in pushing you down that slope are usually fairly brutal. It's the nature of future discoveries is hard to ignore. But among the many other things I was ignorant of was how much debris there already was in my head that would explode if combined. Attitudes There's one item conspicuously missing from this list: American attitudes. Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Put rice in rice cooker. The most convenient measure of power is probably code size. Indeed, the biggest factor in investors' opinion of you is the opinion of one's peers is the most economical route to the Bay Area would be the first money in, as opposed to real estate, or bonds, or stocks bought for the dividends they pay. The great concentrations of wealth I see around me in Silicon Valley. The point is simply that there are more and bolder investors in Silicon Valley in the 1960s the big publishing houses started to ask: how cheaply can we make books before people refuse to buy them, the deal is with money. That last test filters out surprisingly few people.

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. What really bothers parents about their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it's easy to slide into thinking that customers want what you do, the less pressure they feel to act smart. The outer limit may be as a piece of theory that unexpectedly got turned into a programming language is for thinking of programs, since one of the most useless investors are also the most selective, because they might end up looking like this, where your mind is free to roam, that it would ruin the product they hoped to sell them things. Hypothesis: Any plan in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be redeveloped as a single phenomenon. No one wants to program a Turing machine. So I want to know is almost always bullshit. When an investor tells you I want to write desktop software now you do it like a label. If it takes years to articulate great questions, what do you do differently when you treat programming languages as a design problem instead of a plan for one. We know that Java must be pretty sharp. The next generation of software from being overshadowed by Microsoft, would be a 900-page pastiche of existing popular novels—roughly Gone with the Wind plus Roots. 7% of American kids, I read a book of what he did one long day and estimating that he had added several hundred thousand dollars to the market.

Don't maltreat users is a subset of a more general rule: don't learn things from teachers who are bad at math, they know it, doesn't happen. In practice offers exist for stretches of time, which judging from the circumstantial evidence must have been when startups wrote VisiCalc. Have one person talk while another uses the computer. And board votes are rarely split. Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who teach the subject in universities. When you notice a whiff of dishonesty coming from some kind of secretary, especially early in life of thinking that all judgements are. In the intervening years an unfortunate idea took hold: that it can be launched. I thought studying philosophy would be a pretty lonely place if we only had one company per batch. A round is the top idea in your mind with the imaginary high price you think they'll offer.

[nothingman]

The three Republican commissioners now in power at the FCC voted this week to erase the agency's legal authority over high-speed Internet providers.They claim that competition will protect consumers, that the commission shouldn't interfere in the "dynamic internet ecosystem," and that they are "protecting internet freedom." Now that the vote is done, the agency has little to do but mess around with spectrum allocations. The mega-utility of the 21st century officially has no regulator.

WIRED Opinion

About

Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of The Responsive City and Captive Audience.

In the meantime, fed up with federal apathy and sick of being held back by lousy internet access controlled by local cable monopolies, scrappy cities around the US are working hard to find ways to get cheap, world-class fiber-optic connectivity. It’s always been an uphill climb, as the “incumbents”—giant carriers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T—are constantly working behind the scenes to block competition. (Recently, Comcast spent nearly $1 million opposing a municipal-fiber vote in Fort Collins, Colorado. The company did not prevail, I’m happy to report.) But now there’s an additional obstacle: Powerful right-wing billionaires have joined the fight against municipal fiber efforts, using their deep pockets to fund efforts to block even the most commonsense of plans.

Bad news for internet access—the Koch brothers are fighting low-cost open fiber nets.

Look what happened in Louisville, Kentucky. It's a city of about 750,000, the largest in the state. Earlier this year, the city noticed that the state of Kentucky was funding a "middle mile" fiber network designed to connect the state’s 120 counties and provide cheaper connectivity for municipal buildings—KentuckyWired. As part of the project, Louisville—also known as Jefferson County—would be able to run 100 miles of fiber alongside the state network for just the cost of materials.

That seemed like a great deal to Louisville. The city estimated that if it installed fiber for city use from scratch, it would cost $15 million. With the KentuckyWired offer, the same project would cost just $5.4 million—with half of that amount dedicated to placing fiber nodes in West Louisville, a struggling, de facto segregated area of concentrated poverty, poor health outcomes, and general economic distress.

The public benefits of jumping on the KentuckyWired offer would be substantial: Not only would West Louisville get a chance at better access for its homes and businesses, but the city could install fiber-controlled traffic signals, create better and cheaper connectivity for public-safety agencies, and ship data around inexpensively to improve its operations. In a nutshell, the city would build the infrastructure and lease capacity to private internet-service providers. "We were looking at this as our smart city foundation," Grace Simrall, Louisville's chief of civic innovation, says. At least half of the new fiber capacity would be reserved for open access leases, to encourage last-mile retail providers to wire homes and businesses. All for just the cost of the fiber lines.

It seemed to be a no-brainer. “I can't think of a more sensible plan," Simrall says. "I just didn't think that we were going to face opposition on this. We thought surely people would understand that this was a way for us to leapfrog where we were for a fraction of the cost."

But when Simrall and her colleagues went to talk to members of the Louisville Metro Council in May, they found that interest groups, including the cable trade association in Kentucky and something called the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, had been there already. Suddenly, the city's eminently sensible plan was in trouble. "The cable trade association in Kentucky was very vocal about how they thought that this was a waste of taxpayer money and had just spoken to numerous council members on the record about that," Simrall says.

Then Simrall and the city found out that the Washington, DC-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance had been posting frequently on social media opposing Louisville's fiber plan. (Typical tweet: “Google suspended its fiber efforts in many cities due to cost - now wants Louisville taxpayers to foot the $5.4M bill.” The Louisville plan had nothing to do with Google.)

That's when Simrall learned who had joined the forces determined to block Louisville from spending a dime on fiber for the city's use: Charles and David Koch, the brothers backing environment-hostile fossil fuels and funding politicians who dole out goodies to the super-rich. "It's widely known that they [the Taxpayers Protection Alliance] receive a lot of funding from the Koch brothers," Simrall says.

The connection between the TPA and the Koch brothers emerged from investigative reporting by ProPublica and others. This work has revealed that the Taxpayers Protection Alliance is a front advocacy group, part of a network of dark-money organizations supported in part by the Koch brothers. (The funding seems not to come from the Koch family directly but instead is funneled through other Koch-funded groups.) TPA’s most recent IRS filing shows it received about half a million dollars in contributions in 2016, but the sources of these contributions are blacked out. Tax-exempt organizations are not required to disclose the names of their donors publicly. David Williams, TPA’s president, told the Louisville Courier-Journal earlier this year that the group receives funding from “a lot of different sources," including groups affiliated with the Koch brothers.

A look at the TPA blog shows that the organization fights municipal fiber as part of its general anti-government and pro-private-sector activities, claiming that “taxpayer-funded broadband is a waste of money.” This week’s post, not surprisingly, congratulates the FCC on rolling back net neutrality regulations that TPA believes were “hurting taxpayers.”

That made the Louisville fiber project a battle between those trying to help the city and outside money trying to preserve the status quo. With little time before the council vote in mid-June, and facing the prospect that the city would lose forever the opportunity to participate in KentuckyWired at cost, Simrall and her office swung into action. They patiently explained the economic and operational benefits of the city plan to council members and the public, creating a useful infographic to sum up the story. They urged residents to call council members. Simrall had come from the civic tech community in Louisville, and contacted everyone she knew. "Everybody said, 'This is complete common sense,'" Simrall says. On June 8, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted: "Tell your council member to back #KyWired and stop the Kochs from meddling in Louisville's progress."

Later that month, there were two dramatic public meetings on the city's budget for the fiber project. The first vote went along party lines, with Republicans voting against any city involvement in fiber. Simrall and her team kept fighting, and managed to convince some Republicans that the city plan made a lot of sense—especially the Republicans from districts that have suffered from digital redlining by incumbents. In the end, at the final budget hearing, the council voted unanimously to approve the request. "It was really quite a thrilling thing," Simrall says.

At the end of the day, the Koch-funded campaign backfired. It helped fire up some council members who might not have understood the importance of city fiber; once they knew the Koch brothers were against it, the city's plan got their attention. "That felt pretty good," Simrall says.

If the Koch brothers were willing to throw money at opposing an incremental, cheap effort to string fiber alongside an existing state network plan, just imagine what they'll be capable of around more ambitious local efforts. There is a major onslaught looming.

Simrall doesn't think the Kochs actually care about fiber. "It's all their way of opposing particular municipal or state efforts," Simrall says.

The scary thing is that the TPA message can be effective to a public that doesn't understand the importance of fiber and can be easily swayed by claims that internet access should be handled solely by the private sector. The same kinds of Koch-like scare-points were rolled out when the unregulated private sector was solely in charge of electricity 100 years ago. But, as Simrall points out, "At this point, who would go to a city that doesn't have electric utilities? Who would go to a city that doesn't have water, or access to highways? Fiber is that type of infrastructure plan."

That doesn’t matter to the funders of groups like TPA. No matter how limited the government involvement is, they're going to go after it.

via Wired Top Stories

[viralhottopics]

The climate change battle dividing Trumps America

Climate change denial and energy conspiracy are high on the presidents agenda, but US scientists are fighting back

Ever since Donald Trump became US president, certain sectors of American society have felt particularly embattled. His statements on Mexicans and Muslims are notorious, but there is another community, less heard about, that has also been sent reeling: scientists.

If politics has never been a world that is overly respectful to empirical research, Trumps victory exploited a growing popular suspicion of expertise, and a tendency to seek out alternative narratives to fact-based analysis. Conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination campaigns and climate change deniers have all traded on this rejection of science, and their voices have all been heard, to differing degrees, in the new administration. But for the science community perhaps the most provocative act so far of Trumps short time in office was the appointment of Scott Pruitt, a Republican lawyer and climate change sceptic, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Id say a lot of Trumps cabinet picks are not ideal, says Shaughnessy Naughton, of the science activist group 314 Action. But Pruitt is really an offence to the organisation. Hes spent his career suing the EPA. Hes for state rights when its for polluters and against state rights when its for conservation or protecting the environment.

Naughton is the founder of 314 Action, which seeks to promote Stem science, technology, engineering and maths education and help scientists become politicians. The name refers to the first three digits of the mathematical ratio pi, a scientific imprint that occurs everywhere in life. But too often, Naughton believes, science has remained aloof from politics, while politics has grown less troubled about getting involved in science.

Pruitt is perhaps the most conspicuous example of this development. As attorney general for Oklahoma, he frequently sued the EPA in alliance with oil and gas lobbyists. Since taking over at the EPA, he has promised to weaken regulation of carbon emissions from cars and power plants, and has withdrawn requests for information on industrial production of methane.

A leading EPA official called Mustafa Ali, who is involved in environmental justice, recently resigned from the agency, complaining that there has been a concerted effort to roll back the positive steps that many, many people have worked on through all the previous administrations.

Science is under attack, says Naughton, and this administration is an example of that. If you look at the science committee in the House [of Representatives], its clearly hostile to empirical evidence. We are not going to win this battle by signing polite letters. We are going to win by getting a seat at the table. That means getting people that have pro-science agendas and scientific backgrounds elected at all level of government.

A former chemist who has worked in cancer research, Naughton has twice run for Congress, both times losing out in the Democratic primaries. She knows from experience a lot about the pitfalls and demands of American politics, particularly the vital role played by donors.

Though it has only existed since the end of last year, 314 Action has already had more than 3,000 scientists and people from scientific backgrounds sign up for training. One of them is Brian Johnson, a 32-year-old nuclear engineer. Johnson doesnt have much of a political history. He was an active supporter of the independent Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential elections, but thats about it. Now hes aiming to run for Congress in the 2018 elections. The more I look into it, he says, the more I realise it really is a huge commitment. I will probably have to resign from my job in order to campaign.

He will run as a Democrat. Isnt that a long way, politically speaking, from the libertarian Ron Paul? Johnson insists that, on all the critical issues, he supports the party line. But it is striking that his political stance is largely about what he is against rather than what he is for. And first and foremost hes against Trump.

Johnson says he waited to see if Trump would honour his campaign commitment to appoint the best people. When that didnt happen, Johnson got angry.

He appointed Rick Perry to be in charge of the Department of Energy, he says. Hes not exactly a nuclear engineer. Hes been looking to defund data collection on global warming. Hes just protecting his interest in fossil fuels, not serving the American people.

Perry, a former governor of Texas, is an enthusiast for extracting fossil fuels, does not believe that the human effect on climate change is a proven case, and is on record as wanting to scrap the Department of Energy, which is largely devoted to nuclear energy and its applications.

You know Donald Trumps views are not founded in evidence, says Johnson. They are founded in whatever feelings hes got. He doesnt really care if theres evidence for what hes doing.

Not all scientists agree with Johnson and Naughton. For instance, William Happer, the distinguished professor of physics at Princeton University, argues that global warming is not a problem, that climate science is a so-called science, that climate scientists are a glassy-eyed cult, and that increased C02 emissions are beneficial, because they are a boon to plant life.

Naughton laughs when I mention Happers name. Thats like talking about Andrew Wakefield, she says, referring to the British medical researcher, now based in America, who maintains, despite a wealth of contrary evidence, that the MMR vaccination is a cause of autism.

It would be wrong to compare Happer to the thoroughly discredited Wakefield, but its no coincidence that he has been touted as Trumps chief science adviser. Its as if the president is not interested in mainstream scientists who are proponents of widely accepted theories.

Climate change sceptic and now head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Enraged by the administrations appointments and Trumps immigration policy, Brian Johnson turned to 314 Action. But if he thought that his scientific background and opposition to Trump was enough, he soon began to realise what running for office in America involves. He discovered that a deep knowledge of nuclear fusion came a poor second to the ability to fundraise.

314 Action told me the steps I would have to take, how I would fundraise, who I would talk to, and the networks I needed to tap into, he says. Ive learned how to make myself a viable candidate that can run a serious campaign.

Some of what Trump and his cohort say can make the scientific establishment sound like a bastion of political correctness. But science is not only under threat from the right. For many years now the postmodern strand of leftwing thought has tended to view science as a social construct.

This outlook, exposed by Alan Sokals notorious 1996 hoax (in which a spoof scholarly article was published by an academic journal) has often dismissed emphases on empirical research as scientism, in other words as just another belief system.

Indeed, in some cases science has been accused of being simply a cultural pillar of western ideological hegemony. Perhaps the most notorious example of this kind of thinking saw the South African leader Thabo Mbeki reject the orthodox scientific thesis on HIV-Aids as a product of centuries-old white racist beliefs.

In such cases science is understood not as a neutral, or unbiased means of analytical observation and prediction, but instead as a deeply ideological interpretation of events. Both political extremes, for different reasons, have a history of questioning the science establishments political underpinning.

And both have employed the same method to discredit mainstream science: promoting the dissenting voice. Trump seeks out climate change deniers to support his agenda, just as Mbeke made use of the molecular biologist Peter Duesbergs controversial, and now discredited, theory that HIV did not cause Aids. Mbekes stance is estimated to have cost more than 300,000 South African lives.

That took place in a pre-internet age. Now the wonders of technology have made it even easier to disseminate an anti-science message through a medium the web that serves to flatten out hierarchies of empirical truth.

Naughton is familiar with the tactic of digging out heterodox opinions to justify bad policies. What I find completely remarkable, she says, are the people who reject all the experts and find an outlier with a PhD who says something that confirms their belief. It doesnt make any sense. There is a place for questioning everything. Thats important. But we do need experts, we do need to accept facts. Gravity is not something we debate. At a certain point, your opinion is not as relevant as the facts.

But of course its not always easy to distinguish opinion from fact, especially when accusations and counter-accusations of fake news dominate the debate. Scientists are used to a long process of peer review. Thats not how it works in politics.

Politics is much more emotional and volatile than science, says Molly Sheehan, a bioengineer, who is considering whether to enter the congressional race in the Philadelphia area. It moves a lot faster.

She too is using the know-how provided by 314 Action to inform her preparation. Although she is a longstanding political activist, she says it was Trumps election that galvanised her to look at becoming a politician. It went from a hobby to the feeling of I need to do everything in my power to ensure our country comes back to paying attention to reality and paying attention to fact.

Sheehan says the kind of scientific belief and optimism that America experienced under JFK in the 1960s has been replaced by apathy and cynicism. She believes that the US has been growing more anti-science for many years. Its just that Trump has made the drift definitive.

People dont remember how bad diseases were, she says They dont remember polio, or measles or mumps. They dont realise that medical science has had a huge impact on child mortality and morbidity. People dont have the emotional connection to science that they had in the 1960s.

But can scientists create that connection by becoming politicians? President Kennedy, after all, was not a scientist, but the space race he launched captured the public imagination. What can scientists bring to the political scene?

First of all, says Johnson, I think a scientist can really understand technical issues, whether its climate change or cyber security. Politicians like Trump make a decision and then go out and find the science to support it. If I were in Congress I would want to seek out the science first, and then have that inform my policies.

Its an admirable ambition, but is it one that will inspire the public? One of the criticisms that has been launched at politicians, not just in America but in the UK and Europe too, is that they have become too technocratic. Which is to say that instead of viewing issues from a personalised emotive basis, they are more likely to be dry utilitarians, allowing research to show the sensible policy.

The triumph of Trump was to portray that kind of politics as divorced from peoples reality and therefore insular, and most likely corrupt. It worked. But how long will it last? On the whole people tend to prefer trained pilots flying planes and experienced surgeons carrying out serious operations. In other words, when it really matters, we want expertise.

The question is whether the experts are the best people to argue for expertise. Scientists are good at winning the argument, but that doesnt necessarily mean they are good at winning over the people.

Sheehan sees the Trump election as an opportunity for scientists to reassert themselves. For while his presidency may at first be a backward step, Sheehan believes it will provide the impetus to force science back on to the national agenda. It might be the wake-up call thats needed for the pendulum to swing back the other way, she says.

The European temptation to look down on America and its more garish habits has proven particularly irresistible in recent months, but there remains an energy and optimism in the country that should not be underestimated. 314 Action is a fine example of a spirit that doesnt dwell in defeat but instead looks at practical ways of putting things right.

Trump should beware. The scientific revolution starts here.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2nlqIad

from The climate change battle dividing Trumps America

[ntrending]

Humans started transforming Earth a lot earlier than we thought

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/humans-started-transforming-earth-a-lot-earlier-than-we-thought/

Humans started transforming Earth a lot earlier than we thought

Humans started farming and keeping livestock hundreds of years earlier than thought before. (Andrea Kay/)

Today, humans are changing the planet at an unprecedented rate. Despite the threat of climate change, we’re increasing our fossil fuel emissions. We’ve also imperiled up to one million species and altered over 70 percent of the land’s ice-free surface.

While the magnitude of global change today is unmatched in history, that doesn’t mean that ancient societies didn’t leave any impacts on the environment. In fact, humans have vastly altered the land they’ve inhabited for the last 3,000 years, a study published Thursday in Science suggests.

We don’t have an overabundance of archaeological data about how ancient humans lived and used their land. But the models we do have tend to underestimate the amount of land ancient civilizations used for foraging, agriculture, and grazing, the study reports. Those simulations used estimates of human populations in those times to predict land use. But, this “backcasting” is “essentially based on a lot of assumptions and a little bit of data,” says Erle Ellis, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland and one of the study’s authors.

It’s not that we don’t have any information describing human activity back then—it’s that the information is scattered about in the work of hundreds of archaeologists worldwide. No one had taken the time to step back and look at the big picture. So Ellis and his team enlisted 255 archaeologists to complete a questionnaire about land use between 10,000 years ago to 1850. Their knowledge covered 146 regions spanning all continents except Antarctica.

The effort hasn’t gone unnoticed in the field. “I believe that large global patterns across space and time are the primary contribution that archaeology makes to the study of humanity,” says Robert Kelly, an archeologist at the University of Wyoming who wasn’t involved with the project.

“It’s an important paper,” John Williams, paleoecologist at the University of Wisconsin, told The New York Times. “Archaeology is moving step by step into the big data world.”

Putting all of this information together revealed that as far back as 3,000 years ago, farming, grazing and hunter-gatherer activities had transformed the planet. And 10,000 years ago, hunting and foraging was common across 82 percent of the regions surveyed. “We showed that hunter-gatherers are using the land basically globally 10,000 years ago,” says Ellis. “They’re just about everywhere and using a lot of land.”

This map of the global extent of foraging may be the first of its kind, according to Lucas Stephens, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the assessment. “There isn’t a model for foraging,” says Stephens. “That’s a big gap in our knowledge of land use.” Importantly, this lifestyle—which is sort of a catch all for a multitude of activities—can dramatically alter the land and environment. Many foraging-based societies used fire to clear forested areas for hunting, for example.

Around 6,000 years ago, agriculture and pastoralism (raising livestock) started to grow across the Earth’s lands, while foraging declined. At that time, 42 percent of study regions had agriculture. The surveys also found that intensive agriculture—that is, yearly crop production—began much earlier than previous estimates. In 27 regions, the onset of agriculture was over 1,000 years earlier than a model called the HYDE, or History Database of the Global Environment, had estimated. “We see hundreds to thousands of years of earlier onset of intensive agriculture in most regions of the world that currently have agriculture,” says Ellis. “It’s a much deeper view of when humans first began to run agriculture continuously over the landscape.”

The results can help sharpen models like those used to predict climate change, says Ellis. But what he finds most interesting is how these findings illustrate just how long human lives have been intertwined with the environment, an idea that informs conservation efforts. In some regions, plants and animals may have evolved within the context of human land use. “So, when we think about conservation we have to include the knowledge of local people,” says Ellis.

The findings may also add fuel to the fiery debate among archaeologists and geologists over the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic epoch defined by human influence. While it only constitutes about a millimeter of tissue on the entire toilet paper roll of Earth’s history, some scientists argue we’re so profoundly changing Earth that it demands a formal geologic description. In May, a panel called the Anthropocene Working Group voted to define this period as starting in the mid-20th century—a time of rapid population growth, accelerated use of fossil fuels, and the first atomic bomb blasts.

Ellis, who is a member of the working group, disagrees with that move. “There’s no question that we have a dramatic acceleration of human transformation of Earth around that time,” says Ellis. “But, that said, it took thousands of years for this freight train to get up to speed…You can’t understand the depth of our transformation of Earth without understanding this much deeper acceleration over the long term.”

Written By Ula Chrobak

[ntrending]

Scientists worry that shrinking national monuments will hurt their research

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/scientists-worry-that-shrinking-national-monuments-will-hurt-their-research/

Scientists worry that shrinking national monuments will hurt their research

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is suing to defend Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments in Utah. They’re trying to protect more than 400 archaeology sites, where scientists have found thousands of important fossils—including Diabloceratops, one of the oldest known triceratops and David Polly’s personal favorite. When Polly became the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, he never expected that filing lawsuits would be part of the gig.

“We’re primarily a scientific organization,” he says. “We have a scientific conference, we have a scientific journal. But part of our organization’s mission is developing policies and best practices and advocating for vertebrate fossils.”

On December 4, the Trump administration announced that they intend to reduce Bear’s Ears to about 15 percent of the 1.5 million acres designated by President Obama last year. The executive branch will also shrink Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to about half its current size, which was put in place by Bill Clinton in 1996. Polly says that the changes to the national monuments in southern Utah affect at least ten percent of his whole organization, about 2,200 scientists.

Scientists worry that private enterprises such as mineral excavation and drilling will disturb the fossils and wildlife at the monuments, and that this presidential action will lead to funding cuts that will limit both research and science communication. Popular Science spoke to three scientists about their research—and their concerns about how cuts to Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase will affect it.

Allison Stegner

Allison Stegner, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies packrat middens in the Bear’s Ears national monument. That might sound cute, but the research involves anything but fuzzy rodent gloves. These small mammals collect carnivore bones, coyote poop, and the regurgitations of raptors and owls. “It’s really charming,” says Stegner.

Because packrats are so picky about the rocky hovels where they spend their lives, a single family can occupy the same space for thousands of years. This makes them ideal archaeological assistants. “If you were to dig a hole through the sand you would find ancient, buried levels of the packrat nest,” says Stegner. By exploring these layers, she learns about how different species—plants, animals, long-gone mollusks, and even a juvenile parrot—have responded to past environmental changes. With this data, she makes hypotheses about how Utah’s native species will respond to future climate change. She has found that small mammal populations remained pretty much stable over 5,000 years. But that all started to change over the last couple centuries. Lately, species have been disappearing.

In addition to her packrat work, Stegner surveys fossils across the monument. She has found the bones of a phytosaur, an extinct crocodile with a long snout and extensive body armor. She’s also tracked down some Permian fossils that help paleontologist piece together how different species moved from the water to the land over the course of their evolution.

Stegner says that oil and gas mining pose a threat to the rare fossil beds in Bear’s Ears, which shed light on how different species once interacted. “I have no problem with multi-use land in any way, but I do have a problem with giving over this incredible place, that is so important culturally and scientifically, to [serve] the interests of a few people,” she says.

Seth Bybee

Seth Bybee, life sciences professor at Brigham Young University, started hearing reports of fireflies in Utah in 2012. He wanted to investigate the diversity of local firefly populations. He started to collect fireflies in the state, but realized that the research was going to be slow going. Then, he had the idea of harnessing the power of the masses. With the help of Christie Bills, then a collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Utah, he set up a website where citizen scientists could report their firefly observations. Their project took off. “We think we’ve discovered three new species, though we have to do a lot of leg work to make sure,” he says. “We’re pretty excited about that.”

Western fireflies are the party insects of the Pyractomena world. They tend to come out earlier and stay out later than their eastern counterparts, which makes them easier to spot. Volunteers can submit their sightings with a timestamp and habitat information. Undergrads or trained citizen scientists venture out to check the site, which the researchers then load onto a map of fireflies in Utah.

Bybee says that convincing people to submit data was easy. “Turns out Utahns love fireflies,” he says. “It was not a hard sell to get people to participate.” And the project is a popular public service to people who want a luminescent camping experience. Bybee says he gets as many requests for information on where the fireflies are as submissions with new sightings.

Many of the firefly sightings lie with the national monument. Bybee says he doesn’t know how the shrinking public lands will affect his research, or the firefly populations. He anticipates some early conveniences. “It might actually make it easier on us because we don’t have to get as many permits,” he says. But he worries about how the changes will affect his research over time. “We might lose the possibility to get down there and look at these things in untarnished habitats,” he says.

Robert Gay

When Robert Gay was an undergraduate studying paleontology, his research cleared a dinosaur species of cannibalism charges. Other scientists thought that Coelophysis, a bird-like dinosaur, ate its young because they found some bones inside the Coelophysis rib cage. But Gay disproved this theory. “My work showed that the animals had been underneath, not inside, the animals,” he says. “And some of the bones would not have been able to fit down the esophagus.”

Now Gay looks for fossils in Bear’s Ears. He knows exactly what will happen if the monument status is taken away. He’s already lived that scenario. Barack Obama only designated the monument in December 2016. While Gay was working in Bear’s Ears before the change, one of the sites was looted. The skull of a crocodile mimic called a Pravasuchus was returned to staff at the petrified forests of Arizona. The researchers there published an abstract announcing they had the fossilized head right as Gay and his research team discovered the rest of the body. It fit perfectly.

When the site became a national monument, extra law enforcement were assigned to protect archaeological sites. Now, Gay says he is concerned that funding will be cut and his dig, right off the highway, will become a beacon for fossil thieves. “It becomes harder to do the work,” he says. He was also hoping that the area could someday be turned into a dinosaur park display, because of the diversity of species in the area. Visitors might be able to imagine Utah as the Jurassic (or Triassic) Park it once was, with many species of dinosaurs and mammals interacting. Tax dollars fund scientific research, after all, and U.S. citizens deserve to get their money’s worth. Now, he says that dream is a long shot, and people are less likely to view—and be amazed by—the megafauna that once ruled the region. “The public may never get to see this site,” he says.

Written By Ellen Airhart

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT FILTER

VCs ask that you shouldn't answer: Who else are you talking to? For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave, and there was no good way to do it well, then the most successful ones. The Model T didn't have all the features previous cars did. Whatever you make, you will inevitably tend to put them out of business; they feel obliged by various state laws to include boilerplate about why their spam is not a problem. Subject line and doesn't have a probability for Subject free! The spammers are businessmen. For example, about 95% of current spam includes the url of a site they want you to visit. I can usually catch them. False positives yielded by statistical filters turn out to be an email from a founder that helped me understand something important: why it's safe for startup founders to be nice people. Content-based spam filtering becomes a serious obstacle, the spammers will actually stop sending it. It was not till we ourselves raised money that I understood why. Just ask anyone who uses them.

The reason is that between your ability to delude yourself and the wildly unstable nature of the system you're dealing with, things probably either already are or could easily become much worse than they seem. This works better for some startups than others. But consulting is far from free money. Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup.1 The curious thing is, this elixir is freely available to any other company. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet.2 We constantly have to make a living, and it's hard to predict, till you try, how long it will take you through everything you need to do.3 The remaining 5% want you to call a phone number, reply by email or to a US mail address, or in a few cases to buy a certain stock. For millennia that was the canonical example of a job someone had to do it for free, and yet we can profit by helping them, because with our help they could make money.4

And since a successful startup on behaving like a nonprofit to people who don't have money? It's that startups will underestimate the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will rot your brain.5 That idea is not exactly novel.6 I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up in the noise, statistically. One possibility is that this custom reflects the way investors like to collude when they can help a startup, and I'll be rich. This is an area where there's great room for improvement. Sometimes jumping from one sort of work I'd prefer? Y Combinator don't generally have much money, and work on what you want to stop getting spam. And yet in the mid twentieth century servants practically disappeared in rich countries, and these tend to be exactly the ones you'd want to take the two-job route: to work at something for a while at least, if they are the actual registrar for it. Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. The custom of a startup needing a fixed amount you need to make it prestigious. So unless you're fairly sure what you want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids.

But liking the idea of the corporate ladder was still very much alive. Because they're good guys and they're trying to produce research, and only things that are new count as research. And since a successful startup on behaving like a nonprofit to people who don't have money?7 You need some kind of job. Another project I heard about this work I was a kid I was firmly in the camp of bad. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. The domed cities and flying cars we expected have failed to materialize. VCs don't expect you to answer the first question.

It just made me spend several minutes telling you how great they are. They're problems! In fact, what makes the preceding paragraph true is that most readers won't believe it—at least to the extent of acting on it. Maybe the only answer is a central list of domains advertised in spams. Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this. You can filter those based just on the content because the headers are innocent and they're careful about the words they use. There may be room for tuning here, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway. I understood why.8 When new mail arrives, it is exciting to them. Grad school is the other end of the spectrum from a coding job at a big company.

A lot of people: that you could get smarter programmers to work on what you want to help them. And that is dangerous for so many reasons. The techniques for building integrated circuits spread rapidly to other countries. What made this clear to me was having an idea I didn't want to start a startup now, because the economy is so bad is making the same mistake as the people who thought during the Bubble all I have to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. In fact, it's just as well to make the headers look innocent, but my motives are purely selfish.9 01 tcl 0.10 The most effective approach seems to be an accident. The Bayesian approach assigns an actual probability. If new ideas arise like doodles, this would explain why you have to try to get into a good college, from which one would be drafted into some organization and then rise to positions of gradually increasing responsibility. I didn't want to start a startup. A Plan for Spam filter wouldn't have caught it. It was from someone in Egypt and written in all uppercase.

Most people have characteristic ways of doodling. That tends to produce deadlocks. A company that needed to build a factory or hire 50 people obviously needed to raise a large round and risk losing the investors you already have enough funding, that reduces to: close them now or write them off. Use the data to weight your strategy. And since a successful startup out of curing an unfashionable but deadly disease like malaria? I was talking about how investors are reluctant to put money into startups in bad markets, even though that's the time they reach an age to think about. Imagine if people in 1700 saw their lives the way we'd see them. A url that led to a redirect would of course be especially suspicious.

It describes the work I've done to improve the performance of their algorithm, let alone of Bayesian spam filtering in general. But I don't think the bank manager really did. Acquirers too, while we're at it. They may have felt they were forced to do this startup with or without them. When I heard about after the Slashdot article was Bill Yerazunis' CRM114. The response rate for spam-of-the-future must be low, or everyone would be doing it and it will take some effort to make that look neutral. I've been able to achieve filtering rates that approach CRM114's. 9999 if they occur between two digits. It becomes: let's try making a web-based spreadsheet? Be independent. Linus and his students at Liege were among the more tenacious critics.

Notes

Part of the Daddy Model and reality is the most common recipe but not the bawdy plays acted over on the parental dole for life in general we've done ok at fundraising is so hard on the critical path that they only even consider great people to endure hardships, but had a juicy bug to find out why investors who turned them down because investors don't like. This was certainly true in fields that have little do with the melon seed model is more important than the actual lawsuits rarely happen.

VCs seem to have been the losing side in debates about software design.

Bankers continued to dress in jeans and a few months later. Abstract-sounding language. 17.

So instead of hiring them.

Users dislike their new operating system so much better to read this essay will say this is to create a silicon valley out of fashion in 100 years.

Patrick Collison wrote At some point, there was a kid, this is also a second factor: startup founders are in set theory, or magazines. An hour old is not whether it's good, but that's what you're doing.

I hadn't had much success in doing something that was killed partly by its overdone launch. Digg is Slashdot with voting instead of blacklist.

Most employee agreements say that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is very hard to predict precisely what would happen to their situation. People and The Old Way.

If a bunch of adults had been with us if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. It does at least should make the fund by succeeding spectacularly.

That's why startups always pay equity rather than trying to upgrade an existing investor, lest that set an impossibly high target when raising additional money. To talk to, so presumably will the rate of improvement is more efficient: the source of the tube. But it's a net win to include things in shows that they were regarded as 'just' even after the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life using the same people the shareholders instead of blacklist.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Dan Siroker, Kevin Hale, Geoff Ralston, Paul Buchheit, Reid Hoffman, and Adora Cheung for the lulz.