Tuesday, February 08, 2022

When the truth cannot be told without fear of repercussion the possibility of holding power to account has ceased to exist

Bored women join clubs and volunteer. Sad women have affairs


Money is power Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic. “Monopoly was converted to money, money to power, power to policy.” And so it goes


IRS Offers To Settle Cryptocurrency Case, But Taxpayer Wants Precedent That Mining/Staking Is Not A Realization Event


When the truth cannot be told without fear of repercussion the possibility of holding power to account has ceased to exist

The consensus amongst journalists is that Boris Johnson will survive yesterday's debacle following the publication of the interim Sue Gray report.

There was not a single ministerial resignation yesterday, although one private secretary did resign.

Although the Tory backbenchers were almost absent of those willing to support the prime minister, those ministers sitting alongside him looked as if they wished to hang their heads in shame and cover them with their hands, but they did not resign.

Read the full article…


Randwick Mayor Dylan Parker said residents had already been through enough.

"These people have already put up with a legacy of contamination from heavy industry, they're already putting up with heavy vehicle movements, they're already putting up with living next to the port … as well as living right on the doorstep of the airport," Mr Parker said.

"They've taken more than their fair share, but this proposal is too far."


Matraville community oppose plan to build energy plant near residential area


How ‘super-enzymes’ that eat plastics could curb our waste problem Guardian

 

Humans have breached Earth’s threshold for chemical pollution, shows a new study Scroll


Saving the night sky: New Zealand’s craziest experiment yet? BBC


  • Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov has accused Putin of using the 'artificial' conflict as a distraction tactic
  • He says Russia does not have 'critical' threats to justify war and Ukraine has the right to self-defence
  • Emmanuel Macron is holding crisis talks with Putin today after the US warned of an invasion 'any day' 
Top hardline Russian general warns Putin NOT to invade Ukraine and accuses him of a 'criminal policy of provoking a war' in rare outbreak of internal dissent as Emmanuel Macron flies to Moscow for talks


This is just the beginning’: How high heat of 2021 drove catastrophic weather

NBC News: “…Each January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the European Union Earth observation agency Copernicus publish reports on the previous year’s temperature data. Copernicus ranked 2021 as the fifth-hottest year since 1850, while NOAA and NASA ranked it as the sixth-hottest since 1880. An NBC News analysis of global weather stations with data going back for at least 30 years found that 691 weather stations out of 8,892 recorded their highest temperature ever in 2021. 



To distinguish unprecedented heat from everyday weather, scientists measure whether a region’s temperature during a particular time period is above or below the region’s historical temperature for the same time period. Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London, said that measuring these temperature anomalies helps scientists tell the difference between day-to-day weather and longer-term climate changes. “It shows us the direct effects of global warming,” Otto said… In 2021, as Europe recorded its hottest summer, June’s weather anomalies in North America were so significant that the continent recorded its hottest June in 171 years, according to the January Copernicus report. The record-breaking heat was even more notable, scientists say, given that 2021 was a La Niña year, in which climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean produce cooler temperatures across the globe. 

An August 2021 United Nations International Panel on Climate Change report concluded that climate change caused by humans “is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.” Otto, who helped write the report, said that last year’s weather events proved 2021 was “a year that made the evidence unavoidable.”…


The Covid Vaccine We Need Now May Not Be a Shot NYT. Nasal vaccines. One more thing that should have been done a year ago.