COVID-19 Civil Struggles
Taking a page from The Up Series, director John Sutter is making a series of films that revisit four geographic locations every 5 years until 2050 in order to document the effects in those areas due to climate change. The name of the series is Baseline and it’s a reference to the concept of shifting baselines, which the trailer above defines as “a phenomenon of lowered expectations in which each generation regards a progressively poorer natural world as normal”. The four areas the films will focus on are Alaska, Utah, Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands.
Sutter did a TEDx Talk about shifting baselines and climate change — the clip he shows right at the beginning featuring the shifting sizes of fish caught in Key West, Florida is astonishing.
He also wrote a piece about the series and the Alaskan village featured in it.
All Human Beings: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Reimagined as a Soulful Serenade to Diversity and Dignity by Composer Max Richter
A celebration “of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world
Interesting Engineering – “Electric bikes are the new hot thing, and the COVID-19 pandemic that is here to stay for some time has surely strengthened its market. From retailers offering them to NHS workers for free in London to New York City re-legalizing their use to help support food deliveries, we can say they are having a moment in history since people are looking at other ways of commuting to ensure physical distancing. However, the most common electric bikes in the market today range from $400 to $2000, so getting hold of one can be a bit tricky. One Redditor, who had a 20-year-old bicycle and a washing machine laying around, had a pretty innovative solution for that. Redditor, Jimminecraftguy, who is out to get his electricians degree in 2 years, built quite the DIY project indeed: After taking his washing machine’s brushless DC motor out, which runs on 1,100 volts but is made to run on 48 since he doesn’t want “to die anytime soon,” he placed it in the center of his old bike’s frame and connected its drive gear to one of the front chainrings. This way, he was able to send power to the rear wheel, making everything run smoothly…”
MINXIN PEI: China’s Deepening Geopolitical Hole.
China is fast losing friends just when it needs them most. In the last few months alone, China’s relations with India have suffered a devastating blow after a bloody border clash left at least 20 Indian soldiers (and an unspecified number of Chinese soldiers) dead. To punish Australia for daring to call for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, China imposed tariffs on Australian barley and threatened other punitive measures. On July 14, China’s foreign ministry denounced Japan’s recent Defense White Paper in unusually harsh language, raising doubts about the rapprochement Xi has been trying to engineer with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Chinese leaders have only themselves to blame for their growing international isolation. With an inflated sense of their power, they have overplayed a weak hand and driven friendly or neutral countries such as the UK, Canada, India, and Australia into the arms of the US, now China’s principal geopolitical adversary.
