machination.org

"Why.are.there.periods.in.my.iPhone.searches" Me three!

Just Stop Oil protesters interrupt opera at Glyndebourne festival (The Guardian):

“Our highest priority was the safety and security of everyone on site and we would like to thank our staff and performers, whose calm and professional response kept everyone safe, and disruption to a minimum.”

I’m with the demonstrators on this. I think everyone’s highest priority should be the climate crisis. This doesn’t mean one can’t wind down and go to an opera, but only if and until society actually realigns to this priority, expect the rest to be interrupted lest we keep thinking everything is fine.

Cory Doctorow has an essay in Locus flagging points of common ground between broadly genuine progressives and leftists and the misdirected but genuine right, or uncritical skeptics who are often lumped-in with conservatives.

I’ve been getting tongue-tied in knots internally on the same general topic, so thank you, Cory.

How powerful our civics could be if we could unite in numbers on some of these things and reject the truly corrupt.

Instead, genuine folks get conned into engaging in distractions or holding their nose to pick one of two corrupted sides… and it’s only gotten more extreme, and worse, with the alienated becoming seemingly as extreme as the extremists in at least rhetoric sometimes.

Fuck.

“The world will likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold in about a decade, and keep heating to break through a next warming limit around mid-century even with big pollution cuts, artificial intelligence predicts in a new study that’s more pessimistic than previous modeling.” (Associated Press)

Appreciating, as I think I have nearly every year since it began, the “State of the World” thread on the Well, from Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky.

All the local broadcast weather reports I heard the past couple of days celebrated the 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than normal temperatures. Which was depressing. Currently put it in real context.

"... There is now no chance of us avoiding a perilous, all-pervasive climate breakdown. We have passed the point of no return and can expect a future in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50C (120F) are common in the tropics; where summers at temperate latitudes will invariably be baking hot, and where our oceans are destined to become warm and acidic. 'A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world [than] its grandparents did,' McGuire insists."

I was going to say this shit is killing me, but that’s not a great idiom when it is literally killing other people.

• “She is not the same little girl I used to play with…"
• “America is inherently violent”
• “You done shot the lady!” … “You shouldn’t have messed with my momma!”

• MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. — “the scenario which was the least closest fit to the latest empirical data happens to be the most optimistic pathway known as ‘SW’ (stabilized world), in which civilization follows a sustainable path and experiences the smallest declines in economic growth—based on a combination of technological innovation and widespread investment in public health and education.” (Vice)
• How the West’s disasters are outpacing its climate action (New Statesman)
• Flooding in Europe, in Pictures (New York Times)
• Climate Changed Is Blamed for Worsening Flooding in Europe (New York Times)
• EU, China Unveil Sweeping Plans to Cut Greenhouse-Gas Emissions — ‘“Our current fossil-fuel economy has reached its limit…”’ (Wall Street Journal)
• Europe Plans Aggressive New Laws to Phase Out Fossil Fuels (New York Times)
• Planes dump water on Siberian wildfires as residents plead for help — “The Siberian fires have raised fears about the permafrost and peatlands thawing, releasing carbon long stored in the frozen tundra. Meanwhile, ash from the fires could blanket nearby snow cover, turning it dark so that it absorbs more solar radiation and warms even faster.” (Reuters)
• Parts of the Amazon Rainforest Are Emitting Carbon Dioxide (New York Times)
• Brazil’s Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals (Mongabay)
• Wildfires Are Intensifying. Here’s Why, and What Can Be Done. (New York Times)
• E.P.A. Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking a Decade Ago, New Files Show — ‘“In areas where there’s heavy fracking, the data is starting to build to show there’s a real reason for concern,” said Linda Birnbaum … The presence of PFAS, she said, was particularly worrisome. “These are chemicals that will be in the environment, essentially, not only for our lifetimes, but forever,” she said.’ (New York Times)
• Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office (Intercept)
• Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House — ‘Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.’ (Guardian)
• Explosive Interview Directly Implicates Donald Trump in Tax Scheme — ‘Jennifer Weisselberg’s claims would directly tie Trump to what a New York criminal indictment described as a corporate scheme to pay executives “in a matter that was ‘off the books.’”’ (Daily Beast)
• Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election, according to Mark Milley book — “Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.” (Cable News Network)
• “You’re Gonna Have a Fucking War”: Mark Milley’s Fight to Stop Trump from Striking Iran (New Yorker)
• America Punishes Only a Certain Kind of Rebel (New York Times)
• The Left Needs Free Speech — “I would support free speech even if it wasn’t a tactical necessity right now, because I don’t think I have a lock on all the truth in the world. But the fact is, given American realities, where almost half the electorate voted for Donald Trump and large numbers don’t even believe in evolution, no one needs it more than the left. It’s messy, it’s contradictory, it means living with insults and stupidity and even, sometimes, evil and pain. Fortunately, your enemy is in the same position. That may be as good as it gets." (Dissent)
• Biz Markie, Hip-Hop’s ‘Just a Friend’ Clown Prince, Dies at 57 — ‘“I’m going to be Biz Markie until I die,” he said. “Even after I die I’m going to be Biz Markie.”’ (New York Times)
• Biz Markie Dead: Rapper Had a Hit With ‘Just a Friend’ (Variety)

• Quiz: Are You Being Nice Enough About the Climate Apocalypse? ❧ “The world is on fire! But let’s talk about your tone, okay?” (Current Affairs)
• Our climate change turning point is right here, right now (Guardian)
• The ocean is full of tiny plastic particles – we found a way to track them with satellites (Attention to the Unseen)
• Heatwaves and drought are killing trees at an alarming rate (Attention to the Unseen)
• Heat Wave Killed Marine Wildlife en Masse (New York Times)
• ‘This Is What Bipartisanship Looks Like’: Vicious Fire Tornado Caught on Film in California — “Climate policy isn’t about imagining a spectrum from left to right and finding the sweet spot in the middle. It’s a zero-sum battle with physics.” (Common Dreams)
• Chuck Schumer Says He Doesn’t Consider Gas “Clean Energy” (New Republic)
• Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming (BBC News)
• Pope reappears after surgery, backs free universal health care (Reuters)
• Campaign to Rein in Mega IRA Tax Shelters Gains Steam in Congress Following ProPublica Report (ProPublica)
• Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves — “How workers’ retirement savings are enriching billionaires and, in every way imaginable, financing the apocalypse.” (Daily Poster)
• The South, Slavery & the Lost Cause — Jeffery Robinson (Alternative Radio, 2017)

• Opinion: Climate change is about greed. It’s time for big oil to pay us back — “America’s test, therefore, has come down to the question of honesty, honor and survival. Can we overcome corporate greed and a broken political system to save our nation and our world?” (CNN)
• June Was Hottest on Record for North America, Fourth Hottest Globally (New York Times)
• Climate change: US-Canada heatwave ‘virtually impossible’ without warming (BBC News)
• We Are Not Ready — “On the climate crisis and other hyperobjects” (Charlie Warzel - Galaxy Brain)
• Biden Defends Ending a War He’s Not Fully Ending (David Swanson: Let’s Try Democracy)
• Biden Drafting Executive Order to Promote ‘Right to Repair’ (PCMag)
• Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s Partnership Did Not Survive Trump — “…He relies on two internal metrics, known internally as GFW, Good-for-the-World, and CAU, Cares-about-the-world. Facebook constantly polls its own users on whether they saw Facebook as one or both of those things. Both the numbers plummeted, and remained low, after the revelations about Russian election interference and data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica. For years, they failed to rise, no matter how many promises Facebook made to do better and how many new security programs the company started.” (New York Times)
• Tucker Carlson sought interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim (Axios)
• Delta variant said to be far more widespread than federal estimates — “The reality on the ground is likely much higher because states and private labs are taking weeks to report testing results to the CDC.” (POLITICO)

• Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored) — “We are now living our ancestors’ nightmares, and it didn’t have to be this way” (Guardian)
• Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat — ‘It’s not just camp days that have changed; with climate change, nights don’t cool down as much. … Fans at night used to be enough to cool both cabins and campers. “About 10 years ago we noticed this was no longer the case,” and they installed air-conditioning in the cabins … after a “particularly brutal summer.”’ (New York Times)
• Climate change has gotten deadly. It will get worse. (Washington Post)
• Edinburgh flooding: Half of July rain fell in one hour (BBC News)
• Teaching ecology to, building habitats with disadvantaged children: ‘You’ll be amazed at how many animals arrive’ — “A charity worker says the children she teaches about the environment seem increasingly concerned.” (BBC News)
• Local: Access To D.C.’s Cooling Centers Was Limited Last Week, Despite Heat Emergency (DCist)

• At 245, America’s Old Enough to Be Honest About Its Founding (Intercept)
• ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ by Frederick Douglass (Nation)
• A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite — ‘David Surozenski, a Republican, refused to add Trump flags to his display. “That’s not the way I was brought up,” he said. “The American flag political? No.”’ (New York Times) I can admire that.
• Nowhere is safe, say scientists as extreme heat causes chaos in US and Canada — ‘“Climate models are actually underestimating the impact that climate change is having’ (Guardian)
• Is the Future of Farming in the Ocean? (Ep. 467) — “… if you take less than 5 percent of U.S. waters and just grow seaweed, you sequester the carbon-output equivalent of 20 million cars.” (Freakonomics Radio)
• Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld: A Fog of Memos — “The trick was to marginalize the record, to litter it with so many contradictions that a rebuttal to any future historian could always be found.” (New York Times)
• Some major cities ranked by surveillance cameras per km (Marginal Revolution) D.C. doesn’t quite make the top 10. I didn’t crack into the linked report to see if this includes Ring doorbell cameras.
• Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald’s NSA “Scandal” (New Republic) Greenwald has become problematic for me. I appreciated, if wincingly, his defense of principle that tried to force people to recognize the rights, if not agree on the rightness, of folks across the political spectrum. I question the sycophants of the left-ish media cult. But I think Greenwald’s once solid orbit above bullshit has decayed.

Links for 3 July 2021

• The North American heatwave shows we need to know how climate change will change our weather (Attention to the Unseen)
• Biden backs Dems into a corner on climate — “Climate activists … are worried that no one — including President JOE BIDEN and lawmakers on Capitol Hill — is doing enough to fix it, and as climate policies get swallowed up by the reconciliation process, they’re gearing up for a new pressure campaign to turn up the heat on Washington.” (POLITICO Playbook)
• How to survive in a permanent climate emergency (New York Magazine)
• The Dark Side of Solar Power — “… sustainable technology can least afford to be short-sighted about the waste it creates. A strategy for entering the circular economy is absolutely essential — and the sooner, the better.” (Harvard Business Review)
• Leaky Gas Pipeline Sparks an Inferno in the Gulf of Mexico(New York Times), Horrifying Massive Oil Pipeline Blaze Sets Gulf Of Mexico On Fire (Huffington Post)
• Inside the Insurrection on Congress (New York Times by way of Kottke)
• The demographic shift isn’t driving white people to the Right — “What liberals need to do is make a positive case for their values – toleration, neutrality, equality, proportionality and freedom from arbitrary infringements of liberty – on the merits. If they do not, and proceed as if this case were self-evident, then illiberal values such as nationalism, white supremacy, ethnocentrism, male superiority, religious fundamentalism, homophobia and the liberty to take advantage of the weak will surely take their place.” (Aeon)