Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Guardian. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

"Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high" : The Guardian

"State of the Climate report finds Earth’s energy has moved dangerously out of balance, with oceans absorbing vast majority of trapped heat"


"Our home planet is struggling with a record energy imbalance, which is warming oceans to unprecedented levels, making weather more extreme and threatening health and food supplies, the World Meteorological Organization has warned.

The United Nations body confirmed 2015 to 2025 were the hottest 11 years ever measured, but a still bleaker message was that the rising temperature experienced by humans on the surface was only 1% of the faster-accumulating heat in the wider Earth system.

More than 90% of that excess is absorbed by the oceans, which experienced the highest heat content in history last year. The rate of ocean warming has more than doubled over the past two decades, compared with the average over the previous 45 years.

The authors of the latest annual State of the Global Climate report say this highlights the increasing vulnerability of a planet that is moving ever further out of balance as a result of human activity. The burning of oil, gas, coal and forests releases heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are all at their highest level in at least 800,000 years."

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Saturday, March 14, 2026

Brief summary of AI news items this week

"When a robotics chief leaves the fastest-growing AI company in the world, it’s easy to call it “internal drama.” But her reason matters.

OpenAI recently signed a deal with the United States Department of Defense — despite being founded on the principle that powerful AI should benefit humanity and not be weaponized by governments.

For the robotics chief, that principle had quietly disappeared. She chose to leave rather than have her name tied to what comes next.

The concern is bigger than one contract. Military AI rarely stays in the military. Technologies built for war — surveillance systems, autonomous targeting, and behavioral pattern recognition — often move into civilian life within years.

From her perspective, this wasn’t just a disagreement.
It was a refusal to  legitimize a direction she believed could reshape society in ways the public never chose. "    Shared from - https://www.instagram.com/p/DVm8K3QiDrm/?


"Anthropic has released a striking report on how AI could reshape the job market.

Jobs at the highest risk: software developers, financial analysts, and customer service roles.

Groups most affected: women, white workers, older employees, and high-income earners.

But there’s an important nuance: the biggest impact may not be mass layoffs, but companies simply hiring fewer people.

The group most affected could be recent college graduates, whose risk is estimated to be 4× higher.

Entry-level hiring has already dropped about 14% since the launch of ChatGPT, particularly in high-risk occupations.

Safest jobs: bartenders, dishwashers, beach lifeguards, generally physical, hands-on work that AI cannot yet automate.

These roles account for roughly 30% of the labor market.

The most concerning part: AI already has the technical capability to automate many tasks, but widespread disruption is slowed by regulation and the gradual pace of corporate adoption. The main barrier is not skills, it’s acceptance and implementation

The report is based on real data but also includes theoretical modeling, so it should be read with caution. Some manual labor jobs still lack sufficient data for analysis."   Shared from - https://www.instagram.com/p/DVjiNeYjd-g/?
 

Grammarly removes AI Expert Review feature mimicking writers after backlash  

"Grammarly has disabled a controversial AI feature that imitated the style of prominent writers and academics, and is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit from those whose identities were used without consent.

The feature, called Expert Review, used generative AI to produce feedback supposedly inspired by writers including the novelist Stephen King, the astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the late scientist Carl Sagan.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed in the southern district of New York against Superhuman, Grammarly’s parent company. The lawsuit argues that using a person’s name for commercial gain without permission is unlawful, and argues that damages due across the plaintiff class are in excess of $5m (£3.7m).

Since Grammarly’s feature has come to public attention, a number of writers have spoken out about being included."


How does it feel to be a number? "ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony"

Federal agents clash with anti-ICE protesters at the ICE building in Portland, Oregon, on 12 October 2025. Photograph: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images
Federal agents clash with anti-ICE protesters
at the ICE building in Portland, Oregon,
on 12 October 2025. Photograph:
Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images
"ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony"
"US immigration agents in Oregon used a custom-made app to identify neighborhoods and people to target, and had daily arrest quotas they sought to meet during operations, courtroom testimony has revealed.

Details about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ surveillance tools and arrest goals in the state have come to light in a federal lawsuit that compelled officers to answer questions under oath, offering a rare window into opaque, internal strategies that are generally kept secret and have been driving mass detentions and chaotic raids.

The class-action suit, filed by Innovation Law Lab, an immigrants’ rights non-profit, challenged ICE’s practice of detaining people without warrants or probable cause. Advocates said the tactic resulted in widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests, and a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a ruling broadly halting warrantless arrests in Oregon."
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Wednesday, March 11, 2026

"They understood the impact, the consequences, and they saw the profit that it offered and that overrode everything else"

"The oil and plastic industries have continually lied, created a demand for plastic, and shifted the blame of the climate crisis to consumers – all for profit, says author Beth Gardiner in an interview with the Guardian.⁠
As Gardiner started researching her book Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future, she found that the lengths to which plastic was pushed into our lives “only becomes more shocking.”⁠
“I think what stood out most is the deliberateness and intentionality over the years of pushing plastic into our lives,” she said.⁠
Plastic was framed not as an overproduction problem, but as a litter problem. In the US in the late 50s, food, drink, cigarette and packaging companies formed the organization Keep America Beautiful, spending huge amounts on promoting themselves and the message to put rubbish in the correct places.⁠
It was a similar story with recycling. The industry understood that an attempt at recycling would make consumers less guilty about the waste they were producing. “They pushed so many myths and lies,” Gardiner says.⁠
Swipe to read more of the interview with Gardiner and follow the link in bio for the full story."  Link to Instagram pix to swipe through - https://www.instagram.com/p/DVJPP3jjsGV/


Wednesday, March 4, 2026

The Guardian: "I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day"

“I have even questioned whether I can find love in the future because of this.”

A 15-year-old girl living in the UK gives us a shocking insight into the abuse she has had on her Instagram and Tiktok feeds. 

“Like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny: the comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.”

Swipe to read part of her story – and for the full opinion piece follow the link -
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/23/15-year-old-girl-misogyny-social-media-online-abuse.

Illustration by @rfressonok for the Guardian

Friday, February 13, 2026

Capitalism, a story of wolves & sheep

"We can move beyond the capitalist model and save the climate – here are the first three steps" | Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis


"We have an urgent responsibility. Our existing economic system is incapable of addressing the social and ecological crises we face in the 21st century. When we look around we see an extraordinary paradox. On the one hand, we have access to remarkable new technologies and a collective capacity to produce more food, more stuff than we need or that the planet can afford. Yet at the same time, millions of people suffer in conditions of severe deprivation.

"Capitalism cares about our species’ prospects as much as a wolf cares about a lamb’s. But democratise our economy and a better world is within our grasp"
"Capitalism cares about our species’ prospects as much
as a wolf cares about a lamb’s.
But democratise our economy
and a better world is within our grasp"

What explains this paradox? Capitalism. By capitalism we do not mean markets, trade and entrepreneurship, which have been around for thousands of years before the rise of capitalism. By capitalism we mean something very odd and very specific: an economic system that boils down to a dictatorship run by the tiny minority who control capital – the big banks, the major corporations and the 1% who own the majority of investible assets. Even if we live in a democracy and have a choice in our political system, our choices never seem to change the economic system. Capitalists are the ones who determine what to produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.

And for capital, the purpose of production is not primarily to meet human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to deliver on any ecological goals. The purpose is to maximise and accumulate profit. That is the overriding objective. This is the capitalist law of value. And to maximise profits, capital requires perpetual growth – ever increasing aggregate production, regardless of whether it is necessary or harmful."


End to homelessness possible but not with this administration

"'Deeply illogical': this man's life work could end homelessness – and Trump is doing all he can to stop it "

After four decades of research and over a decade of federal support, Housing First’s Sam Tsemberis is ‘back to being an outlaw’ in the US
After four decades of research and over a
decade of federal support, Housing First’s
Sam Tsemberis is ‘back to being an outlaw’ in the US
"Now in his fourth decade of spreading the word across most of the world’s continents about “Housing First”, an approach to helping homeless people that has convinced governments and non-profits alike to see housing as a human right, Sam Tsemberis experienced a first.

He was censored by the US government.

In the 1990s, Tsemberis began developing a simple idea: people living on the street want, and should have, safe housing with no strings attached. When you add accessible mental health and addiction services and caring, consistent case management, most stay housed. His research would bear out the idea, showing that Housing First results in at least 85% of people staying housed 12 or 24 months later, depending on the study. These are higher rates than any other approach that’s been studied.

The idea was and still is not easy to implement because it depends on all the components being present: the apartments, the services and the committed case workers. It also requires believing that unhoused people “deserve” a place to live – a belief abhorrent to the Trump administration and most Maga conservatives."

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Sunday, February 1, 2026

The Guardian: "What to know about the jury trials of Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube"

"Social media companies will have to answer to a jury – for the first time – for allegations that their products are intentionally addictive and harmful to young users’ mental health. Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts sued Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, leading to a series of landmark trials that began this week. Jury selection in the first case started on Tuesday in Los Angeles court.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is among the big tech CEOs who are expected to testify. Both sides are likely to bring in experts to hash out the science behind alleged addiction to social media.
Social media companies will have to answer to a jury
Social media companies
will have to answer to a jury

The initial trial involves a 20-year-old, identified by the initials KGM, who alleges she experienced physical and emotional harm after becoming addicted to social media at age 10. This case is expected to last six to eight weeks, and will be the first of about 22 “bellwether” trials. The outcome can signal, and influence, how courts and juries may handle similar lawsuits in the future. Snap and TikTok have settled with the plaintiff in the first case, leaving Meta and YouTube to stand trial.

“Everybody’s looking at it as a data point,” said Benjamin Zipursky, a law professor at Fordham University."

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Saturday, January 31, 2026

The Guardian: "The arrest of Don Lemon is blatant censorship. And he is not the only one"

The arrest of Don Lemon is blatant censorship. And he is not the only one | Seth Stern

The arrest of Don Lemon is blatant censorship
The arrest of Don Lemon
is blatant censorship

"Two federal courts reviewed the government’s evidence against journalist Don Lemon and declined to approve his arrest last week. But nevertheless, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, persisted, desperate to please her authoritarian boss no matter what the constitution and law say or what her ethical obligations as an attorney require.

Thursday’s arrests of Lemon and Georgia Fort, an independent journalist – like the recent raid on Hannah Natanson, the Washington Post reporter – demonstrate the administration’s lawless crusade against routine journalism. In normal times the expectation is that even when a journalist’s conduct might technically fit the legal elements of a crime – jaywalking to get footage of a protest, for example – prosecutors will exercise their discretion and judgment to not apply the law in a manner that chills the free press.

Those assumptions are inverted now. Even when journalists’ conduct is plainly non-criminal, prosecutors will work overtime to figure out some way to harass them, no matter how frivolous. Discouraging journalists from doing their job is not a side-effect they seek to avoid – it’s the whole point. There is no telling what nonsensical legal theories the administration may advance if it decides to make an example of a reporter it doesn’t like. The law and constitution are only marginally relevant – the only real rule is don’t piss off Trump."

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Friday, January 30, 2026

'The LED of heating': cheap geothermal energy system makes US comeback

Nearly half a century ago, the US Department of Energy launched a clean energy experiment beneath the University of Minnesota with a simple goal: storing hot water for months at a time in an aquifer more than 100 metres below ground.

The idea of the seasonal thermal energy storage was to tuck away excess heat produced in summer, then use it in the winter to warm buildings.

Now, 45 years after the first test wells were drilled under the university’s St Paul campus, one of the first large-scale aquifer thermal energy systems in the country is being built less than 10 miles from the original test site.

The Heights, a mixed-use development rising from a former golf course on the city’s Greater East Side, will tap thermal energy from an aquifer 100 to 150 metres below ground.

Groundwater from wells spread across the northern half of the 45-hectare development will be drawn by high-efficiency electric heat pumps, powered in part by solar panels, to provide low-cost heating and cooling with little greenhouse gas emissions for 850 homes and several light-industrial buildings.


Sunday, December 21, 2025

The Guardian: "First wheelchair-using astronaut touches down after ride to edge of space"

"A paraplegic engineer from Germany blasted off on a dream-come-true rocket ride with five other passengers on Saturday, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while beholding Earth from on high.

The Guardian: "First wheelchair-using astronaut touches down after ride to edge of space"
The Guardian: "First wheelchair-using astronaut
touches down after ride to edge of space"
Severely injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, Michaela Benthaus became the first wheelchair user in space, launching from west Texas with Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin. She was accompanied by a retired SpaceX executive also born in Germany, Hans Koenigsmann, who helped organize and, along with Blue Origin, sponsored her trip. Their ticket prices were not divulged.

An ecstatic Benthaus said she laughed all the way up – the capsule soared more than 65 miles (105km) – and tried to turn upside down once in space.

“It was the coolest experience,” she said shortly after landing."


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Wednesday, December 17, 2025

The Guardian: 'You don't have to do it alone': how US cities are helping each other resist ICE

"When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on Chicago in September, Chicagoans sprang into action to protect their immigrant neighbors: teaching each other how to recognize and safely document ICE agents, setting up “know your rights” trainings, and distributing whistles en masse so people could loudly alert anyone in the vicinity when ICE was spotted.

In the months since, whistles have become a popular raid alert tool in other cities across the country – New Yorkers wear them around their necks to warn neighbors, the people of New Orleans blast them outside ICE facilities and Charlotte residents used them to ward off Customs and Border Protection officials. While strongly associated with Chicago, the tactic is actually one that city organizers learned in part from groups in Los Angeles. Its spread is illustrative of the many ways cities are helping inspire and equip one another in the face of often unlawful federal activities.

Rain Skau, a co-coordinator of the Fight Fascism campaign of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles, said Angelenos began to use whistles to alert neighbors about ICE presence when agents first started hitting the city in June. Despite the federal government’s claims that these raids were targeting hardened criminals, Skau described one of the first raids at a Home Depot as mostly snatching women vending food in the parking lot, stuffing them into vans as meat sizzled on the grills they left behind."


Monday, December 8, 2025

The Guardian: "It's still not OK boomer: younger Americans are flailing – and mad as hell"

"Almost every couple that I know in their 20s, 30s or even 40s has had the same argument with their parents before getting married.

The Guardian: "It's still not OK boomer: younger Americans are flailing – and mad as hell"
The Guardian: "It's still not OK boomer:
younger Americans are flailing – and mad as hell"
The parents say to open a wedding registry. The couple responds that they do not want one. They don’t expect gifts from wedding guests (their “presence is enough”), and they have been cohabiting for years and already have plates, bedsheets and a blender. In fact, since they live in a small rented apartment, they barely have room for the plates that they do have – let alone a set of china.

Perhaps, they will timidly suggest, guests who really want to give a gift can donate to a honeymoon fund? Or better yet, make a small contribution toward a downpayment on a house?

The parents get upset. Asking for cash, they say, is “tacky”, and also puts people in the difficult position of having to choose an amount to give. The young couple will point out that they are not asking for cash, just giving an option for those who want to mark the occasion."


Continue reading the article -> "It's still not OK boomer: younger Americans are flailing – and mad as hell" | J Oliver Conroy https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/07/boomer-millennial-gen-z-housing?CMP=share_btn_url

Sunday, November 30, 2025

The Guardian: "Brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say – with adult mode not starting until early 30s"

"Brain has five 'eras', scientists say – with adult mode not starting until early 30s"

"Scientists have identified five major “epochs” of human brain development in one of the most comprehensive studies to date of how neural wiring changes from infancy to old age.

The study, based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years.

“Looking back, many of us feel our lives have been characterised by different phases. It turns out that brains also go through these eras,” said Prof Duncan Astle, a researcher in neuroinformatics at Cambridge University and senior author of the study."


Direct link to the study published by Nature as referenced

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

The Guardian: "US supreme court extends Trump pause on $4bn in food aid benefits"

"Millions of Americans grappling with food insecurity will face more uncertainty this week after the US supreme court enabled the Trump administration to continue withholding funds for food stamps.

In an administrative stay issued on Tuesday, the highest court upheld the administration’s request to extend a pause on a federal judge’s ruling that would have required $4bn in funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Snap, the food aid relied on by 42 million people, to be distributed. The funding freeze has been given two additional days, and will now remain in place until midnight on Thursday.

With the House planning to vote Wednesday on a package that could spell the end to the longest government shutdown in US history, the administration has dug its heels in on fully funding the essential food program, insisting the funds will only be cleared when Congress comes to a compromise.

“The only way to end this crisis – which the executive is adamant to end – is for Congress to reopen the government,” solicitor general D John Sauer wrote in the Trump administration’s filing."

Continue reading the full article -> 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/11/us-supreme-court-trump-snap-food-benefits

You can help the Franklin Food Pantry meeting the increasing need during these times of uncertainty with a monetary donation or purchase from their Amazon Wish list...   
scroll down the home page to make a choice -> https://www.franklinfoodpantry.org/
scroll down the home page to make a choice ->
https://www.franklinfoodpantry.org/

Saturday, August 2, 2025

The Guardian: Changes at National Museum of American History come amid president’s push to reshape US cultural agencies

"The Smithsonian Institution has scrubbed all mention of Donald Trump’s impeachments from a prominent display at the National Museum of American History, temporarily eliminating any acknowledgment of the president’s unique status as the only US leader the House impeached twice.

The alterations to the presidential power exhibit, first reported by the Washington Post, occurred in July, with museum officials replacing contemporary signage with an older version that excludes Trump’s impeachment proceedings entirely. Visitors now see only a generic reference to three presidents facing potential removal from office.
Museum representatives confirmed the changes followed an institutional review of exhibition content.

“In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed,” a Smithsonian spokesperson told the Guardian. “Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”


"“This is a very targeted, well-thought-out plan of dismantling the Snap program that federal policy makers won’t take responsibility for"

"Poverty and hunger will rise as a result of the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to the US federal “food stamps” program, according to experts. Low-income workers who rely on the aid are braced for dire consequences.

Katie Giede, a single mother and waitress in Conyers, Georgia, is one of the 42 million Americans who use the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap). Even with the maximum benefit permitted, she struggles to afford food for her and her child.
She makes $3 an hour plus tips at the fast-food chain Waffle House, where she has worked for 11 years. The company deducts meals from workers’ pay check per shift, regardless of whether they eat one or not.

“Our pay is already so little that we’re struggling with everything,” Giede told the Guardian. “Single mothers like myself are reliant upon the benefits like Snap and Medicaid. So when you go and you cut that as well, now you have mothers out here that are not only worried at night because they already can’t afford housing or a vehicle, but we’re also worried what is our kid is going to eat? Because we no longer have help.”

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

How do we lead moral lives in the age of bullies?

"We are living in an age of bullies. Those with power are less constrained today than they have been in my lifetime, since the end of the second world war.

How do we lead moral lives in the age of bullies?
How do we lead moral lives in the age of bullies?
The question is: how do we lead moral lives in this era?

Vladimir Putin launches a horrendous war on Ukraine. After Hamas’s atrocity, Benjamin Netanyahu bombs Gaza to smithereens and is now starving to death its remaining occupants.

Trump abducts thousands of hardworking people within the US and puts them into detention camps – splitting their families, spreading fear. His immigration agents are accused of targeting people with brown skin.

He usurps the powers of Congress, defies the courts, and prosecutes his enemies."

Friday, July 25, 2025

How Boston is handling climate in the face of riding tides via The Guardian

Via The Guardian, we can read: 

"As the Trump administration dismisses global heating, the coastal city is getting on with becoming one of the most climate resilient in the world. Here’s how

Patrick Devine, a captain for Boston Harbor City Cruises, shows me on his phone the scenes here in September 2024. The water was ankle-deep outside the door to his office on Long Wharf, one of the US city’s oldest piers, obscuring the pavements and walkways, surging into buildings and ruining vehicles in the car parks. “It just gets worse and worse each year,” says Devine, who has worked here, on and off, since 1995. “I’ve gotten used to it, so it’s just knowing your way around it.”

A waiter at Chart House restaurant in Boston during a ‘wicked’ high tide. Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images
A waiter at Chart House restaurant in Boston
Much of Boston has got used to this. Devine has his own supply of sandbags now, for example. Next door to his office is the Chart House restaurant – when Long Wharf flooded last September, customers merrily sat at outside tables, holding their feet above the waterline, as servers with black bin bags for trousers waded over to bring them their lunches. The restaurant’s floor level is lower than that of the wharf, so the water came up to knee level in some areas. “It’s just part of business,” says one waiter, as he points out how the plug sockets are all at waist height. The place has flooded three times in the year he’s worked here. “We just clean it up, squeeze it out, open the doors, dry it out. It is what it is.”
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