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aprossi

(4) It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water - 0 views

  • The latest on Georgia's new law suppressing voting access
  • It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water 
  • A lawsuit has already been filed over the new Georgia law limiting voting
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  • A Georgia state lawmaker was arrested for protesting the bill outside the governor's office
  • Georgia passed a sweeping elections bill restricting voting access. Here's what you need to know.
  • Georgia secretary of state vows to "ensure" eligible citizens will be able to vote under new elections law
  • Stacey Abrams calls Georgia elections bill "nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0"
  • Voting rights groups have slammed Georgia's far-reaching bill, particularly for its provisions aimed at the secretary of state and local election officials.
  • At least 45 states have seen bills aimed at voter suppression. These are the key states to watch.
peterconnelly

Donald Trump is pushing an insane conspiracy about the Georgia governor's race - CNNPol... - 0 views

  • (CNN)One week ago, Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp crushed former Sen. David Perdue by 52(!) points in a high-profile primary fight.
  • On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Perdue, suggested that something was fishy about that race.
  • So, because Trump's record of endorsements in 2022 is generally strong, the fact that he endorsed a bunch of candidates in Georgia who lost must mean that there were shenanigans happening.
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  • "Something stinks in Georgia," concludes Robinson. "The numbers are funny because many of these races were rigged."
  • According to Robinson, those numbers are "funny" and "rigged." Which is a pretty big claim to make without any evidence other than a month-old poll and suggestions that Trump's endorsement had mattered in other states and, therefore, had to matter more in Georgia.
  • Georgia Republicans are, yes, generally supportive of Trump. But there remains some lingering resentment that Trump's relentless focus on the 2020 election may have cost the GOP two Senate seats in January 2021 runoffs -- and, with them, the Senate majority. Therefore, backing candidates solely because they are willing to endorse Trump's baseless election claims may be less appealing to Georgia Republican voters than voters in other states where Trump's endorsement has mattered more.
  • That seems slightly more plausible than Robinson's fact-free suggestion of hundreds of thousands of votes being somehow manipulated to hurt Trump, right?
cvanderloo

In Georgia County, Elections Bills Have Consequences : NPR - 1 views

  • Long before Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a 98-page law that enacted drastic changes to election rules in Georgia this week, some lawmakers were already facing pushback amid an inflamed debate over voting rights.
  • Hancock County is about 100 miles east of Atlanta and one of the poorest in the country.
  • "He knows how important absentee voting and early voting is to this community," he said. "And he goes and introduces legislation to make it harder, more difficult for the very people to vote that are paying him as county attorney!"
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  • Thornton said he believes that an attorney should be an advocate, not an adversary, and others agree
  • One bill Fleming introduced, HB 531, would have curbed Sunday early voting, restricted mail-in voting, even made handing out food and water to voters a misdemeanor crime.
  • Fleming was county attorney that year when about 20% of Sparta's voters — all Black — had their voter registrations challenged before a mayoral race.
  • While Republicans have proposed hundreds of restrictive bills across the country, Warren says the particular measures discussed in Georgia are personal for Black people like himself that experienced Jim Crow laws firsthand.
  • Warren said Facebook posts and meetings with community members helped mobilize action before the county commission, and now says other local jurisdictions that have hired Fleming as attorney are considering dropping him, too.
  • In the short term at least, it appears that some Republicans are paying attention. The bill signed into law Thursday reversed course on some of the harshest measures, keeping no-excuse absentee voting and actually expanding in-person early voting access.
ilanaprincilus06

Georgia Lawmaker Arrested As Governor Approves New Elections Law : NPR - 0 views

  • Repeatedly knocking on the office door of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp got one state lawmaker arrested at the Capitol on Thursday.
  • A law signed by Kemp on Thursday includes new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters' access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state.
  • Cannon is facing a charge of obstructing law enforcement officers by use of threats or violence and she faces a second charge of disrupting general assembly sessions or other meetings of members.
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  • "was advised that she was disturbing what was going on inside and if she did not stop, she would be placed under arrest."
  • She is seen yelling in one video: "There is no reason for me to be arrested. I am a legislator!"
  • And her arrest prompted comparisons to civil rights and police brutality protests from this summer as well as those of the 1960s.
  • Georgia's Constitution says lawmakers "shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly" except for treason, felony or breach of the peace.
  • questioned what made Cannon's actions "so dangerous" that warranted her arrest.
  • Cannon tweeted early Friday thanking her supporters and said: "I am not the first Georgian to be arrested for fighting voter suppression. I'd love to say I'm the last, but we know that isn't true."
runlai_jiang

You Asked About CES 2018. We Answered. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • You Asked About CES 2018. We Answered. By BRIAN X. CHEN At the International Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, thousands of tech companies showcased some of the hottest new innovations: artificial intelligence, self-driving car tech, the smart home, voice-controlled accessories, fifth-generation cellular connectivity and more.Curious about the new products and how they will affect your personal technology? Readers asked Brian X. Chen, our lead consumer technology writer who is attending the trade show, their questions about wireless, TV and the Internet of Things. 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  • At the International Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, thousands of tech companies showcased some of the hottest new innovations: artificial intelligence, self-driving car tech, the smart home, voice-controlled accessories, fifth-generation cellular connectivity and more.
  • Curious about the new products and how they will affect your personal technology? Readers asked Brian X. Chen, our lead consumer technology writer who attended the trade show, their questions about wireless, TV and the Internet of Things. (In addition,
Javier E

The herd mentality is all around us - 0 views

  • “Personal space” and the idea of being left alone with one’s thoughts can almost be seen as modern add-ons to what humanity is like, and perhaps more typical of WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societies than others
  • WEIRD-ness being the coinage of Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Harvard and the author of “The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.” Reviewing the book for The Times, the Tufts University philosophy professor Daniel Dennett described Henrich’s concept thusly:The world today has billions of inhabitants who have minds strikingly different from ours. Roughly, we weirdos are individualistic, think analytically, believe in free will, take personal responsibility, feel guilt when we misbehave and think nepotism is to be vigorously discouraged, if not outlawed.
  • They (the non-WEIRD majority) identify more strongly with family, tribe, clan and ethnic group, think more “holistically,” take responsibility for what their group does (and publicly punish those who besmirch the group’s honor), feel shame — not guilt — when they misbehave and think nepotism is a natural duty.
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  • There are signs that at the same time, so many other people are seeking to countenance diversity of thought, disavowing the comforts of the idea that their view is the only legitimate one and fostering an ideal under which our society frames difference of opinion as a norm rather than a threat. We can see it in aspects of linguistic behavio
  • To us WEIRD-os, by contrast, the ever-stronger purchase of individualism in our intellectual, moral and civic development seems natural. But it’s challenging, perhaps unnatural, to be an individual.
  • That realization makes less shocking to me, albeit utterly dismaying, the many dogmatic behaviors exhibited today that seem outwardly irrational or close to it. The kinds of things that make it seem as if so many of us are, so to speak, losing it are actually signs of how difficult it can be to get past what we seem to be hard-wired for. Fanatic beliefs, furious ideologies and even, potentially, a sense of duty to harm people in the name of certain beliefs reflect the eternal temptation of a sense of belonging to a group, of being part of a larger story, of having a guiding sense of purpose.
  • Casual American English, in ways we’re not always conscious of, is more overt in allowing room for disagreement than it used to be. For example, the use of “like” that so bothers purists is in reality a useful discursive hedge, along with phrases such as “sort of,” “kind of” and “you know.” In conversation, these expressions can be read as subtle indications that someone knows that there are other ways to view things, and to be too categorical is to imply a certainty that all may not share.
  • Moral Courage College, an alternative to the D.E.I. ritual, a program offering training in how to productively grapple with the wide range of views and experiences found in most workplaces, as well as colleges, universities and even K-12 schools
  • a method called Diversity Without Division. “This program doesn’t tell anybody what to think or believe,” she has said, “it teaches everybody to lower their emotional defenses so that contentious issues can be turned into constructive conversations and healthy teamwork.”
  • Courage is allowing that your own view may be but one legitimate one among many, that there are no easy answers, and that being your own self is a more gracious existence than joining a herd.
Emily Horwitz

Charles Darwin gets 4,000 write-in votes in Georgia | Reuters - 1 views

  • called evolution and the Big Bang Theory, "lies straight from the pit of hell."
  •  
    An amusing article about evolution and the election!
Javier E

Wine-tasting: it's junk science | Life and style | The Observer - 0 views

  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'lifeandstyle'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on guardian.co.uk because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on guardian.co.uk ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } Wor
  • Hodgson approached the organisers of the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest contest of its kind in North America, and proposed an experiment for their annual June tasting sessions.Each panel of four judges would be presented with their usual "flight" of samples to sniff, sip and slurp. But some wines would be presented to the panel three times, poured from the same bottle each time. The results would be compiled and analysed to see whether wine testing really is scientific.
  • Results from the first four years of the experiment, published in the Journal of Wine Economics, showed a typical judge's scores varied by plus or minus four points over the three blind tastings. A wine deemed to be a good 90 would be rated as an acceptable 86 by the same judge minutes later and then an excellent 94.
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  • Hodgson's findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine."The results are disturbing," says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. "Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year."Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win."
  • French academic Frédéric Brochet tested the effect of labels in 2001. He presented the same Bordeaux superior wine to 57 volunteers a week apart and in two different bottles – one for a table wine, the other for a grand cru.The tasters were fooled.When tasting a supposedly superior wine, their language was more positive – describing it as complex, balanced, long and woody. When the same wine was presented as plonk, the critics were more likely to use negatives such as weak, light and flat.
  • In 2011 Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist (and former professional magician) at Hertfordshire University invited 578 people to comment on a range of red and white wines, varying from £3.49 for a claret to £30 for champagne, and tasted blind.People could tell the difference between wines under £5 and those above £10 only 53% of the time for whites and only 47% of the time for reds. Overall they would have been just as a successful flipping a coin to guess.
  • why are ordinary drinkers and the experts so poor at tasting blind? Part of the answer lies in the sheer complexity of wine.For a drink made by fermenting fruit juice, wine is a remarkably sophisticated chemical cocktail. Dr Bryce Rankine, an Australian wine scientist, identified 27 distinct organic acids in wine, 23 varieties of alcohol in addition to the common ethanol, more than 80 esters and aldehydes, 16 sugars, plus a long list of assorted vitamins and minerals that wouldn't look out of place on the ingredients list of a cereal pack. There are even harmless traces of lead and arsenic that come from the soil.
  • "People underestimate how clever the olfactory system is at detecting aromas and our brain is at interpreting them," says Hutchinson."The olfactory system has the complexity in terms of its protein receptors to detect all the different aromas, but the brain response isn't always up to it. But I'm a believer that everyone has the same equipment and it comes down to learning how to interpret it." Within eight tastings, most people can learn to detect and name a reasonable range of aromas in wine
  • People struggle with assessing wine because the brain's interpretation of aroma and bouquet is based on far more than the chemicals found in the drink. Temperature plays a big part. Volatiles in wine are more active when wine is warmer. Serve a New World chardonnay too cold and you'll only taste the overpowering oak. Serve a red too warm and the heady boozy qualities will be overpowering.
  • Colour affects our perceptions too. In 2001 Frédérick Brochet of the University of Bordeaux asked 54 wine experts to test two glasses of wine – one red, one white. Using the typical language of tasters, the panel described the red as "jammy' and commented on its crushed red fruit.The critics failed to spot that both wines were from the same bottle. The only difference was that one had been coloured red with a flavourless dye
  • Other environmental factors play a role. A judge's palate is affected by what she or he had earlier, the time of day, their tiredness, their health – even the weather.
  • Robert Hodgson is determined to improve the quality of judging. He has developed a test that will determine whether a judge's assessment of a blind-tasted glass in a medal competition is better than chance. The research will be presented at a conference in Cape Town this year. But the early findings are not promising."So far I've yet to find someone who passes," he says.
aprossi

Severe storms and tornadoes hit the South, killing at least 6 and leaving heavy destruc... - 0 views

  • Severe storms and tornadoes hit the South, killing at least 6 and leaving heavy destruction
  • Strong storms and tornadoes whipped across parts of the South on Thursday evening and Friday morning, killing at least five people in Alabama and one in Georgia, and leaving parts of several communities in ruins.
  • Firefighters were going door to door in the city of about 40,000 people southwest of Atlanta on Friday morning, and helped several people from their homes after trees fell on the structures
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  • In all, 23 tornado reports formed -- one in Mississippi; 17 in Alabama; and five in Georgia, the weather service said. Teams from the weather service will inspect the areas to confirm which were hit by tornadoes.
  • About 38,000 homes and businesses were without power in Alabama and Georgia
cvanderloo

Vaccine Eligibility In Many States Expanding To Include All Adults : Coronavirus Update... - 1 views

  • Nearly half of U.S. states will have opened COVID-19 vaccinations to all adults by April 15, officials said Friday, putting them weeks ahead of the May 1 deadline that President Biden announced earlier this month.
  • Jeff Zients, Biden's COVID-19 czar, said that 46 states and Washington, D.C., have announced plans to expand eligibility to all adults by May 1.
  • "It's clear there is a case for optimism, but there is not a case for relaxation," Zients said. "This is not the time to let down our guard. We need to follow the public health guidance, wear a mask, socially distance and get a vaccine when it's your turn."
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  • Alaska became the first state to make vaccinations available to all adults over the age of 16 earlier this month, followed by Mississippi. Several others have since followed suit, including Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia.
  • Other states are moving to make more groups eligible ahead of schedule, based on age or underlying conditions.
  • According to a map released by the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Friday, four states have yet to confirm plans to expand eligibility ahead of the May 1 deadline: New York, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina, where officials have said they are not on track to hit that threshold until May 3.
  • Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the briefing that the country has seen an uptick in case counts and hospital admissions, with the most recent 7-day averages showing about 57,000 cases and 4,700 hospitalizations per day, and hospitalizations hovering around 1,000.
  • The U.S. is administering 2.5 million shots a day at its current pace, Zients said, adding that vaccine makers are "setting and hitting targets." Some 27 million doses went to states, tribes and territories this week.
  • Johnson & Johnson has accelerated production of its single-shot vaccine and is on track to deliver 11 million doses next week.
mshilling1

How Conspiracy And Disinformation Are Affecting U.S. Politics : NPR - 0 views

  • From President Trump's phone call to Georgia officials demanding to "find" more votes to Trump supporters heading to D.C. to reject the election results — disinformation is playing a key role.
  • Hannah, since we were talking about the embrace of conspiracy theories, we can't ignore what we've heard in the last 24 hours - The Washington Post releasing this recorded phone call of President Trump trying to persuade Georgia officials to reject their election results. And he used conspiracy theories and debunked information to make his case
  • I mean, we all knew Trump was clinging to the election conspiracy, promoting disinformation around it. But it's still quite something to hear it, to hear the president of the United States attempt to cajole and intimidate by invoking conspiracy, to hear him source his information to the Internet.
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  • So, you know, this ploy is doomed, but the effect is the continued erosion of trust in democratic institutions by giving credence to these bogus theories.
  • You talk about mainstreaming. A new NPR/Ipsos poll shows that a majority of Americans - more than 80% - are concerned about the spread of false information
  • But if you look a little closer, it breaks down kind of predictably along partisan lines with each side blaming the other for the spread.
  • I am looking forward to having the conversation about how we rebuild the trust in our democratic institutions, including our election systems, with people of good intent, with people who want to do that. And I just think that this certain segment of the population isn't interested in doing that because it doesn't fulfill their objectives.
Javier E

X accounts Elon Musk recommended for Israel-Hamas war news belong to a teenager, Georgi... - 0 views

  • A social media account recommended by Elon Musk for its coverage of the Israeli war with Hamas with a long history of antisemitic posts is connected to a southwest London teenager, according to research and a text exchange with the account.
  • Both accounts were among seven cited a week ago by researchers at the University of Washington as the “new elites” of influence on X, with more than 1.6 billion combined views in the first three days of the war.
  • “Most of the accounts also use video and images frequently, framed in emotional ways,” researchers wrote. “Strikingly, many of these accounts have received prior promotion from X owner Elon Musk, either through direct recommendation or through Musk’s account replying to their content, which may explain some of their dominance of 'news Twitter.’”
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  • By that point, @WarMonitors had drawn 132 million views and @sentdefender 302 million views. The University of Washington report said the seven accounts were achieving more views than established media accounts despite having fewer followers.
  • Both of the accounts describe themselves as news aggregators and reporters of “open-source intelligence,” mainly conveying items that have already surfaced elsewhere to a new audience. (The @sentdefender account’s display name is OSINTdefender).
  • Unlike more established open-source accounts, they often do not cite a source, let alone include links to the media in which they appear with more context.
  • The behavior, though, seems optimized for X’s latest changes, which Musk has said are designed to keep people from on the app instead of clicking away to read or watch more. Musk has also taken steps to reduce the traffic going from X to large media organizations, including eliminating headlines from posted articles.
catbclark

The weaker sex | The Economist - 0 views

  • One group in particular is suffering (see article). Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century.
  • The two-parent family, still the norm among the elite, is vanishing among the poor.
  • Policymakers also need to lend a hand, because foolish laws are making the problem worse. America reduces the supply of marriageable men by locking up millions of young males for non-violent offences and then making it hard for them to find work when they get out (in Georgia, for example, felons are barred from feeding pigs, fighting fires or working in funeral homes).
Javier E

Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Your new book, “Between the World and Me,” is a great and searing contribution to this public education. It is a mind-altering account of the black male experience. Every conscientious American should read it.
  • Written as a letter to your son, you talk about the effects of pervasive fear. “When I was your age the only people I knew were black and all of them were powerfully, adamantly, dangerously afraid.”
  • the disturbing challenge of your book is your rejection of the American dream. My ancestors chose to come here. For them, America was the antidote to the crushing restrictiveness of European life, to the pogroms. For them, the American dream was an uplifting spiritual creed that offered dignity, the chance to rise.
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  • Your ancestors came in chains. In your book the dream of the comfortable suburban life is a “fairy tale.” For you, slavery is the original American sin, from which there is no redemption. America is Egypt without the possibility of the Exodus. African-American men are caught in a crushing logic, determined by the past, from which there is no escape.
  • The innocent world of the dream is actually built on the broken bodies of those kept down below.
  • I think you distort American history. This country, like each person in it, is a mixture of glory and shame. There’s a Lincoln for every Jefferson Davis and a Harlem Children’s Zone for every K.K.K. — and usually vastly more than one. Violence is embedded in America, but it is not close to the totality of America.
  • In your anger at the tone of innocence some people adopt to describe the American dream, you reject the dream itself as flimflam. But a dream sullied is not a lie. The American dream of equal opportunity, social mobility and ever more perfect democracy cherishes the future more than the past. It abandons old wrongs and transcends old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow.
  • This dream is a secular faith that has unified people across every known divide. It has unleashed ennobling energies and mobilized heroic social reform movements. By dissolving the dream under the acid of an excessive realism, you trap generations in the past and destroy the guiding star that points to a better future.
  • Ben.Lynch Augusta, Georgia 1 day ago I've followed Mr. Coates for sometime now and tend to agree with his viewpoints. As a white southern male who works in our segregated education systems, it took years for me to actually apprehend my day to day interactions with black children in poverty. For the longest time, I simply couldn't understand the behaviors I saw, the reactions, and at first I reacted with contempt, but then I began to understand little by little. I don't think I can express it to anyone here, let alone Mr. Brooks, but it is something that one only appears to get by letting it sink into your bones day after day, hour after hour. The conditions are terrible and promise to remain so for the rest of my career. My students know, even if they lack the rhetorical chops to express it, that the game is rigged, that what we sell, meaning America at large, to make ourselves feel better, to feel just, is demonstrably a false bill of goods that does nothing to solve the actual problems of their life. These students are so used to being crushed that they can't even begin to articulate that they are being crushed because it's simply how it is. Some suppose Mr. Coates is overly dour, overly negative, but he provides a necessary contrapuntal to those who assume that the arc of the universe inevitably bends toward justice. Struggle can and often does end in defeat. The wicked often sleep as well as the just and sometimes better. The sins of the fathers remain fixed around the necks of the sons and daughters.
Javier E

Rachel Dolezal's Unintended Gift to America - The New York Times - 0 views

  • It is most unfortunate that Ms. Dolezal did not begin her television interviews on Tuesday by acknowledging that she should not have claimed to be black. She might have been forgiven if she had stated clearly that, while she may identify herself as black, by American society’s standards, her racial designation is white.
  • Ms. Dolezal’s view of herself — however confused, or incongruent with society’s — reveals an essential truth about race: It is a fiction, a social construct based in culture and not biology. It must be “made” from what people believe and do. Race is performative. It is the memories that bind us, the stories passed down to us, the experiences that we share, the social forces that surround us.
  • Identities are never entirely our own, but does that mean that we should lose all control in determining who we are? Advertisement Continue reading the main story
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  • Even W. E. B. Du Bois had trouble formulating a theoretically accurate account of racial identity, so he put it simply: A black man is “a person who must ride ‘Jim Crow’ in Georgia.” But his statement still leaves us with a puzzle: What would a black man be without Jim Crow to define him?
  • The historical evidence is overwhelming, then, that the color line has always been far more porous and fragile than one might assume. In some places, it was so brittle that it could buckle and break.
  • To say that race is socially constructed gives it an air of make-believe. Race is quite real to those who live with it. Ask the families of the black men and women who have lost their lives during tragic encounters with the police. The choices about “who” they were, were not their own.
  • There is no essentialized, fixed, “true identity” waiting just below the surface. Identities are contingent, elusive and, as the cultural theorist Stuart Hall argued, “always in process.
  • at the very least, perhaps we can use Ms. Dolezal’s story, puzzling as it is, as an opportunity to have a candid, lively, long-delayed, public conversation about the knotty meanings of race and racial identity, and how it has confounded our nation’s best aspirations. Perhaps we may yet move beyond the imprisoning boxes we have made.
sgardner35

Upon closer look, a global warming hiatus is ruled out, U.S. scientists say - LA Times - 0 views

  • fresh look at the way sea temperatures are measured has led government scientists to make a surprising claim: The puzzling apparent hiatus in global surface warming never really happened
  • Mainstream scientists have struggled to explain to the public how climate change can be getting worse if the warming of the planet's surface slowed at the turn of the century. Their various theories have chalked it up to dust and ash blasted into the sky by volcanic eruptions, a rare period of calm in the solar cycle, and heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean and other waters.
  • “I don't find this analysis at all convincing,” said Judith Curry, a climatologist at Georgia Tech who argues that natural variability in climate cycles dominates the impact of industrial emissions and other human actions. “While I'm sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don't regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.”
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  • In the study, the NOAA researchers argue that long-standing problems with the way temperatures are measured have masked years of sea surface warming. Once those problems are corrected for, “this hiatus or slowdown simply vanishes,” said lead study author Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
  • Although researchers have long known that sea surface temperatures measured by autonomous buoys run cooler than temperatures measured by ships, they have failed to account for this as they expanded their use of buoy readings over the last two decades, the study authors argued.
  • “The buckets, when you pull them up, tend to evaporate their water, and if they're canvas there's even more evaporation,” Karl said. “By the time people stick a thermistor in the bucket to measure temperature, it's already slightly cool.”
  • “If you start a short-time series on an anomalous value, you tend to get an anomalous trend,” Karl said.
  • A growing number of climate scientists have argued that this phenomenon, as well as other hiatus effects, are evidence of a poorly understood pattern of wind, ocean current and temperature variations that have far-reaching effects on global climate. They say the oceans have absorbed heat energy from the sun, causing Arctic ice to melt and sea levels to rise.
  • “One way to think about it is that global warming continued, but the oceans just juggled a bit of heat around and made the surface seem cooler for a while,” said Joshua Willis, another climate scientist at JPL.
  • “All of those factors are real,” Karl said. “If those factors had not occurred, the warming rate would have been even greater. … If anything we may still be underestimating the trend.” 
Javier E

Specs that see right through you - tech - 05 July 2011 - New Scientist - 0 views

  • a number of "social X-ray specs" that are set to transform how we interact with each other. By sensing emotions that we would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social gaffes and help us understand each other better.
  • In conversation, we pantomime certain emotions that act as social lubricants. We unconsciously nod to signal that we are following the other person's train of thought, for example, or squint a bit to indicate that we are losing track. Many of these signals can be misinterpreted - sometimes because different cultures have their own specific signals.
  • n 2005, she enlisted Simon Baron-Cohen, also at Cambridge, to help her identify a set of more relevant emotional facial states. They settled on six: thinking, agreeing, concentrating, interested - and, of course, the confused and disagreeing expressions
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  • More often, we fail to spot them altogether. D
  • it's hard to fool the machine for long
  • The camera tracks 24 "feature points" on your conversation partner's face, and software developed by Picard analyses their myriad micro-expressions, how often they appear and for how long. It then compares that data with its bank of known expressions (see diagram).
  • Eventually, she thinks the system could be incorporated into a pair of augmented-reality glasses, which would overlay computer graphics onto the scene in front of the wearer.
  • the average person only managed to interpret, correctly, 54 per cent of Baron-Cohen's expressions on real, non-acted faces. This suggested to them that most people - not just those with autism - could use some help sensing the mood of people they are talking to.
  • set up a company called Affectiva, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, which is selling their expression recognition software. Their customers include companies that, for example, want to measure how people feel about their adverts or movie.
  • To create this lexicon, they hired actors to mime the expressions, then asked volunteers to describe their meaning, taking the majority response as the accurate one.
  • In addition to facial expressions, we radiate a panoply of involuntary "honest signals", a term identified by MIT Media Lab researcher Alex Pentland in the early 2000s to describe the social signals that we use to augment our language. They include body language such as gesture mirroring, and cues such as variations in the tone and pitch of the voice. We do respond to these cues, but often not consciously. If we were more aware of them in others and ourselves, then we would have a fuller picture of the social reality around us, and be able to react more deliberately.
  • develop a small electronic badge that hangs around the neck. Its audio sensors record how aggressive the wearer is being, the pitch, volume and clip of their voice, and other factors. They called it the "jerk-o-meter".
  • it helped people realise when they were being either obnoxious or unduly self-effacing.
  • y the end of the experiment, all the dots had gravitated towards more or less the same size and colour. Simply being able to see their role in a group made people behave differently, and caused the group dynamics to become more even. The entire group's emotional intelligence had increased (
  • Some of our body's responses during a conversation are not designed for broadcast to another person - but it's possible to monitor those too. Your temperature and skin conductance can also reveal secrets about your emotional state, and Picard can tap them with a glove-like device called the Q Sensor. In response to stresses, good or bad, our skin becomes clammy, increasing its conductance, and the Q Sensor picks this up.
  • Physiological responses can now even be tracked remotely, in principle without your consent. Last year, Picard and one of her graduate students showed that it was possible to measure heart rate without any surface contact with the body. They used software linked to an ordinary webcam to read information about heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature based on, among other things, colour changes in the subject's face
  • In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, police officers can decide whether someone is a criminal just by looking at them. Their glasses scan the features of a face, and match them against a database of criminal mugshots. A red light blinks if there's a match.
  • Thad Starner at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta wears a small device he has built that looks like a monocle. It can retrieve video, audio or text snippets of past conversations with people he has spoken with, and even provide real-time links between past chats and topics he is currently discussing.
  • The US military has built a radar-imaging device that can see through walls to capture 3D images of people and objects beyond.
Javier E

Video Nation - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “If you watch the nightly news it feels like the world is falling apart,” Obama said at a fundraiser last month. He’s half correct. Not many people watch the actual nightly news anymore, but millions watch the cinéma vérité of horrible things, from punching a loved one to beheading a journalist.
  • The president understands this dynamic, yet he seems helpless to do anything about it. He’s as reactive as the rest of the world. Nearly 200,000 people have died and three million refugees are wandering in despair because of the Syrian conflict. But the American public was resolute in not wanting any part of it until the beheadings of two of our citizens appeared.
  • “All you need to do is see the videos of the beheadings and we’re not worried about mission creep,”
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  • That’s it in a nutshell: public policy driven by visceral reaction to videos.
  • And for the cherry on top of that dollop of honesty, consider the candid cynicism of Representative Jack Kingston, of Georgia, explaining the Republican strategy on Obama’s initiative. “We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well, and ask him what took him so long,” he said.
  • No person of conscience could watch the Ray Rice video without feeling revulsion. But that shouldn’t be the new standard for outrage and action. Trying to sway someone with an old-fashioned appeal — e.g., figures on the number of women who are kicked cold every day — is largely fruitless.
  • “The world has always been messy,” said Obama, a smart man, making a smart observation to a public that doesn’t reward that trait. “In part we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”
maddieireland334

Google Fiber heading to Salt Lake City - 0 views

  •  
    Google made the announcement in a blog post Tuesday. The city joins several others where Google is laying down cable to provide incredibly fast Internet access. Atlanta, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and both Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina are getting Fiber soon. Google Fiber delivers Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.
lucieperloff

Biden Administration Ramps Up Debt Relief Program to Help Black Farmers - The New York ... - 0 views

  • pledging to reverse decades of discriminatory agricultural lending and subsidy policies that have left Black farmers at an economic disadvantage and is racing to deploy $5 billion in aid and debt relief to help them.
  • Now the department is in the middle of a drastic overhaul, both of its personnel and of policies that it acknowledges have perpetuated inequality in rural America for years.
  • root out the vestiges of racism at his agency and to redress “systemic discrimination” that Black farmers had faced.
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  • The Agriculture Department has faced sharp criticism from minority farmer groups for lacking diversity and ignoring complaints of bias in its programs.
  • That includes $8 billion that the Agriculture Department will use toward crop purchases, grants to food processors and distributors, and other programs to help farmers struggling with the pandemic.
  • The bill also provides “sums as may be necessary” from the Treasury Department to help minority farmers and ranchers pay off loans granted or guaranteed by the Agriculture Department, providing debt relief and aid for members of minority racial and ethnic groups that have long experienced discrimination at the hands of the government.
  • With the onset of the coronavirus, many farmers were forced to plow under crops or dump their milk, even as grocery store shelves emptied out and many American families went hungry.
  • A driving force behind the provisions for minority farmers was Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senator from Georgia whose election in January helped give Democrats control of the chamber.
  • Those factors led to a substantial loss of land.
  • The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes.
  • “If we had the same amount of investment that the other farmers had, a lot of Black farmers would still be farming this date.”
  • Injecting race into the relief effort has stirred backlash and criticism from some Republican lawmakers who have described the program as a kind of “reparations” for discrimination toward Black farmers.
  • “The same people who are complaining and using language to try to vilify this priority for African-American farmers are the same people who didn’t say a peep when tens of billions of dollars went out to the richest farmers in America,”
  • Mr. Vilsack is creating a commission to be a watchdog for racial equity issues at the agency
  • “Black farmers don’t trust the United States Department of Agriculture.”
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