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tongoscar

California Is Booming. Why Are So Many Californians Unhappy? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • For all its forward-thinking companies and liberal social and environmental policies, the state has mostly put higher-value jobs and industries in expensive coastal enclaves, while pushing lower-paid workers and lower-cost housing to inland areas like the Central Valley. This has made California the most expensive state — with a median home value of $550,000, about double that of the nation — and created a growing supply of three-hour “super commuters.” And while it has some of the highest wages in the country, it also has the highest poverty rate based on its cost of living, an average of 18.1 percent from 2016 to 2018. That helps explain why the state has lost more than a million residents to other states since 2006, and why the population growth rate for the year that ended July 1 was the lowest since 1900.“What’s happening in California right now is a warning shot to the rest of the country,”
  • “It’s a warning about income inequality and suburban sprawl, and how those intersect with quality of life and climate change.” You can see this in California economic forecasts for 2020, which play down the threat of a global trade war and play up the challenge of continuing to add jobs without affordable places for middle- and lower-income workers to live.
  • California is at a crossroads. The state has a thriving $3 trillion economy with record low unemployment, a surplus of well-paying jobs, and several of the world’s most valuable corporations, including Apple, Google and Facebook. Its median household income has grown about 17 percent since 2011, compared with about 10 percent nationally, adjusted for inflation.
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  • As the economy picked up and housing costs resumed their rise, lower-paid service and professional workers moved to distant exurbs, while homelessness spiraled to the point that local political leaders are all but declaring they are out of solutions.
  • There are increasing complaints in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho that rents and home prices there are being pushed up by new arrivals fleeing California.
tongoscar

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-2019-1.5427586 - 0 views

  • Climate change is costing cities as they try to adapt and mitigate. Farmers are facing increasing challenges, which can lead to consumers paying more for food.
  • "In my line of work, we do track the numbers and we do try to quantify the behaviour of the climate system, but ultimately what really matters is where it intersects and impacts with the people we love and the things we do," said Deke Arndt, chief of the global monitoring branch of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
  • "Some people who work in weather-sensitive sectors such as agriculture … are seeing [climate change] on an annual basis, and they're seeing [it] through greater extremes,
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  • The fires raging in Australia are just a recent example of the challenges a continuously warming Earth will present. To date, 28 people have died, including two firemen, and millions of animals are thought to have perished.  Then there are hurricanes. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian sat almost immovable above Abaco Island in the Bahamas for more almost 24 hours, killing at least 70 people. Heat waves killed an estimated 1,500 people in France in 2019. The good news is this is far below the 2003 heat wave that killed an estimated 30,000 across Europe, with 14,000 in France alone. And here at home, a heat wave killed 66 people in Montreal in 2018.
tongoscar

'Women's rights are human rights': Hundreds rally at the Capitol for Salt Lake City wom... - 0 views

  • “It’s important because women’s liberation is something that we’ve been fighting for for so long, and it’s not something that’s come to fruition yet. As we can see misogyny is still deeply rooted in this nation.” said Ermiya Fanaeian, 19, a speaker at the event.
  • On the steps of the Capitol, six speakers discussed issues facing indigenous women, incarcerated women, African American women and LGBTQ women.
  • “Young people are the future leaders, young people are folks who need to start now, who need to start recognizing these socio-political issues, so that in the future they’re folks who can lead the way when it comes to laws.”
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  • “When we start fighting for liberation for all women, then those of us in the margins can be liberated the most — those of us who are of color, those of us who are queer, those of us who are lower class, who are working-class — all these different intersections.”
  • She said it’s important for people to use their privilege and voices to speak out for marginalized groups. “People are being put in cages, missing and indigenous women and children are being ignored and when we end all injustice it will be a better world for everyone.”
Javier E

Meet DALL-E, the A.I. That Draws Anything at Your Command - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A half decade ago, the world’s leading A.I. labs built systems that could identify objects in digital images and even generate images on their own, including flowers, dogs, cars and faces. A few years later, they built systems that could do much the same with written language, summarizing articles, answering questions, generating tweets and even writing blog posts.
  • DALL-E is a notable step forward because it juggles both language and images and, in some cases, grasps the relationship between the two
  • “We can now use multiple, intersecting streams of information to create better and better technology,”
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  • when Mr. Nichol tweaked his requests a little, adding or subtracting a few words here or there, it provided what he wanted. When he asked for “a piano in a living room filled with sand,” the image looked more like a beach in a living room.
  • DALL-E is what artificial intelligence researchers call a neural network, which is a mathematical system loosely modeled on the network of neurons in the brain.
  • the same technology that recognizes the commands spoken into smartphones and identifies the presence of pedestrians as self-driving cars navigate city streets.
  • A neural network learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of avocado photos, for example, it can learn to recognize an avocado.
  • DALL-E looks for patterns as it analyzes millions of digital images as well as text captions that describe what each image depicts. In this way, it learns to recognize the links between the images and the words.
Javier E

Pupils at elite Welsh school to get lessons in climate change - 0 views

  • For the first time in 50 years, the directors of the IB are collaborating with schools to create an updated version of the qualification taken by 16 to 19-year-olds as an alternative to A-levels
  • A cohort of 20 pupils at UWC will drop a third of the traditional subjects usually studied within the IB. Instead they will spend 300 hours, over two years of study, on the new areas. Forms of assessment have yet to be finalised but there will be no exams on these subjects.
  • Learning will be project-based, collaborative and designed to tackle “multiple global crises” around the world. IB says it is creating the new qualification because there is a growing disconnect between the education children are receiving and the education they need.
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  • Olli-Pekka Heinonen, director-general of the IB, told The Times that teenagers taking the new diploma would be “uniquely empowered” on leaving school.
  • Traditional assessment often led to pupils forgetting what they had learnt once exams were over, he said. “The aim of this type of assessment is to strengthen deep learning and understanding, something you learn that stays with you and is part of you. We’re experimenting with non-exam assessment and finding the best ways to evaluate.
  • “Biodiversity, food, migration and energy are meaningful and attractive to young people. They’re appealing and relevant.“We’re looking at these areas through the lens of systems leadership — ie, how it’s possible to make change happen.”
  • The school hosts pupils from 80 different countries and charges fees of £37,000 a year. It is set in St Donat’s Castle, in 122 acres and its grounds include woodland, farmland, a valley and its own seafront.
  • Naheed Bardai, principal of UWC Atlantic, said he felt dissatisfied with the state of education in the world today as pupils should be prepared to become leaders of organisations and government in the 2040s and 2050s.
  • He said the new qualification would help them understand the root causes of problems but also become compassionate world leaders that can create “transformative solutions”.
  • “Our core policies are peace, sustainability and experiential learning but there’s very little education for young people at the intersection of problems, particularly where the human meets the natural world,”
  • We need people who can take constructive action as inequality is growing at a tremendous rate.”
  • Bardai said the school had been given a free hand in curriculum writing and was looking at more radical forms of assessment. This may include interviews, peer assessment and portfolios.
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