The New York Times: “…New York City is experiencing a surprising return of native wildlife, in numbers and diversity remarkable even to local ecologists and parks officials. “You are seeing miraculous occurrences of wildlife right in the middle of the city,” Mr. Benepe said. It would be easy to surmise that nature blossomed and the creatures came out during New York City’s lockdown last year. But wildlife needs habitat, and the animals’ return, according to Kathryn Heintz, the executive director of the NYC Audubon Society, is because of the city’s 40-year effort to expand and clean up its parks, rivers, forests and wetlands. This has included planting more trees, wildflowers and grasses that are native to the area, banning pesticides in parks and spending billions on converting former landfills and industrial wastelands into nature sanctuaries. New York is now “the greenest big city on earth,” Ms. Heintz said. But while parks officials say they are excited by these ecological breakthroughs, many cite concerns about the city’s relatively low parks budget, which they say poses a threat to natural habitats because of deteriorated drainage systems and understaffed maintenance crews…”
Federal resources should pool together so Australia’s security agencies can share mental health support and a new service for complaints and resolutions, a parliamentary committee says
Shared psychologists and complaints watchdog needed for security agencies
The struggle to maintain Australia’s cybersecurity - Report
The Warmhearted Women Who Raise Orphaned Baby Wombats Until They’re Can Be Released Into the Wild Laughing Squid
Bubblicious: Crypto Euphoria’s Emerging Impact on Housing John Burns Real Estate Consulting
On the trail of The Beatles in India, a reminder of the paths that led them here Scroll
Surreal photos show the aftereffects of the eruption of Spain’s Cumbre Vieja volcano WaPo
The Never-Aging Ants With a Terrible SecretAtlantic
#CheetahCubdate 8: Little Home on the GrassesSmithsonian So sweet your teeth will hurt.
Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology
“Even in a polarized era, deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Partisan polarization remains the dominant, seemingly unalterable condition of American politics. Republicans and Democrats agree on very little – and when they do, it often is in the shared belief that they have little in common. Yet the gulf that separates Republicans and Democrats sometimes obscures the divisions and diversity of views that exist within both partisan coalitions – and the fact that many Americans do not fit easily into either one. Republicans are divided on some principles long associated with the GOP: an affinity for businesses and corporations, support for low taxes and opposition to abortion. Democrats face substantial internal differences as well – some that are long-standing, such as on the importance of religion in society, others more recent. For example, while Democrats widely share the goal of combating racial inequality in the United States, they differ on whether systemic change is required to achieve that goal…Pew Research Center’s political typology provides a roadmap to today’s fractured political landscape. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the 2021 survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions…”
- Interactive: How the political typology groups compare
- Quiz: Where do you fit in the political typology?
- Decoded: Behind Pew Research Center’s 2021 political typology
New search engine – You.com – promises privacy
A new search engine, You.com – is now in beta: FAQ – “You.com never sells your data to advertisers or follows you around the internet. You.com gives you the option to choose between a customized search experience or an entirely private one. Our private mode offers the most private search experience of any search engine. In private mode, You.com never stores your queries, preferences or locations. That also means that localized queries (such as “best restaurants near me”) won’t work. In private mode, we only save whether the service is used at all, in order to prevent attacks and misuses of our servers. In private mode, while we do have to send anonymized query data to Microsoft, Yelp, weather services, and other apps, these queries come from the You.com IP address, so these partners won’t know who the query originated from. Even in standard mode, we strive to only store the minimal data to make your experience better…”
- Results appear in tiled format with abstracted references, Web results, quick facts, scholarly papers, videos, news, maps, and social media. This site is visually horizontal in presentation of search results, rather than a vertical list which is the standard for most search engines. Give it a try. I located results for searches that did not appear using other search engines. The layout is a bit confusing, but can be visually appealing. Some web, image, video, or news results are powered by Microsoft. When joining the Beta, username and password accounts can be created.
- See also Fast Company – Try this new Google alternative for a radically different way to search
- “Pupils should be encouraged to contribute more than ‘yes, Socrates; certainly, Socrates’ most of the time” — a gov’t report on The Academy, from a collection of “polite emails to the ancients” from “a very firmly 2021 standpoint”
- A philosopher’s statement of synthesis — the tracks on a new album of instrumental music from Dale Dorsey (Kansas) unfold in developing patterns that make the perfect soundtrack for your night drive on the electronic highway from here to 1980 (title track is esp. good)
- “Every female PhD student is sleeping with her supervisor, don’t be naive, it is well known. They all do.” — being told this during a job interview was just one of many incidents of sexism philosopher Juliette Ferry-Danini has faced (from 2020 / via Andrew Mills)
- “The cleverest people are not those speaking loudest or trying to impress. They are generous instead.” — Stephen Mumford (Durham) on good philosophical discussion
- The University of Austin is premised on misrepresentations about what happens in college classrooms and the state of higher education in the U.S. — commentary from Aaron Hanlon (Colby College)
- Analytic philosophy generator — by Andrew M. Bailey (Yale-NUS) (via the Australasian Association of Philosophy)
- A closer look at Kathleen Stock’s departure from Sussex and Peter Boghossian’s from Portland State — at Liberal Currents