Bill Nye Explains The Connection Between Climate Change And Terrorism In Paris

You're only an "economic migrant" if you're poor and brown

Ned Richardson-Little is a Canadian academic who went to the US “in search of a better life,” did research in Germany and settled in the UK, something he was able to do thanks to his economic migrant grandfather who happened to have been born in Scotland.

Richardson contemplates the vilified category of “economic migrant” – “the greedy, dark other to those virtuously fleeing conflict” – and wonders how it is that no one has ever vilified him, given that he, too, is so obviously an “economic migrant.”

My grandparents (and father) were displaced people – Red Army deserters who destroyed their papers so that they could escape Europe via the DP boats to Canada – and I left Canada for the USA to found a company, then moved to the UK to represent an NGO and became a citizen, and have now moved back to the USA to write novels and campaign for better information policy. No one has ever called me an economic migrant.

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/29/youre-only-an-economic-mig.html

In an experiment, two ravens had to simultaneously pull the two ends of one rope to slide a platform with two pieces of cheese into reach. If only one of them pulled, the rope would slip through the loops, leaving them with no cheese. Without any training they solved the task and cooperated successfully.

However, when one of the two birds cheated and stole the reward of its companion, the victims of such cheats immediately noticed and started defecting in further trials with the same individual.

“Such a sophisticated way of keeping your partner in check has previously only been shown in humans and chimpanzees, and is a complete novelty among birds.”

Source

It is easy to see where we are heading – the future will need far fewer workers. Computers, automation and robots will eliminate jobs in increasingly large numbers, and also apply downward wage pressure. Which is completely backwards from what could be happening if we designed society for the benefit of all. If the wealth were not concentrating, every worker would be benefiting from the increases in productivity created by all of this new technology. Wages would be rising and the work week would be shortening. Instead, all of the benefits are flowing straight to the 1% and everyone else is suffering.

This is where the idea of the Basic Income comes in. It is a standardized way of addressing the large scale unemployment that is coming soon, as well as simplifying welfare, retirement and disability payments, as well as making the productivity increases available to everyone in society instead of the elite few.

The idea is simple: everyone in society receives a regular income simply for being alive. The ultimate goal is for the Basic Income payment, by itself, to provide a comfortable living for every member of society without working.

(cross-posted on the MIT Center for Civic Media blog)

A few years ago when I was working on the Civic Commons project with Code for America and OpenPlans, I did a presentation at Living Cities called “Cities that Work Like the Web” which discussed using open standards and…

Want to know more about how millions of people are forced to pick cotton by the Government of Uzbekistan every year?

This video explains the issue clearly in just two minutes:

Apple yanks drone-strike-tracking app from App Store

The app, Metadata+, was created by Josh Begley, research editor for The Intercept; Begley changed its name from Drones+ after it was rejected as “objectionable” by Apple five times.

At the time, an Apple employee told Begley that the app would never be approved if it focused on US drone strikes, but would have a chance if he “broadened his topic” because “there are certain concepts that we decide not to move forward with, and this is one.”

Metadata+ never the word “drone” – this may be how it snuck past the Apple censorship board. But seven months later, Apple has unceremoniously yanked it.

Apple: a giant corporation that gets to decide which journalism you’re allowed to access with apps on your device, and whose lawyersrepeatedly told the US government that changing this situation should be a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Ecosystems work great – they just fail miserably. The important part of a benevolent dictatorship isn’t the “benevolent” – it’s the “dictatorship.”

Read the rest

my man went for it

Breathtaking Images of Underwater Life Captured by Freediving Photographers Alex Voyer and Alex Roubaud

Through this workshop, participants will be able to:

Identify locally-important climate change impacts, challenges, and opportunities

Develop specific actions to adapt forests to changing conditions

Use the Adaptation Workbook to create their own “climate-informed” projects

Better communicate with stakeholders about key climate change impacts, challenges, and opportunities

Access post-training support from NIACS staff during project planning and implementation

DATES Six-week distance learning course held the weeks of January 18 through February 22, 2016 REGIONS Northwoods and New England

REGISTER ONLINE

http://goo.gl/forms/reGFz1r6xE

There is no registration fee thanks to support from the US Forest Service and USDA Northern Forests Climate Hub.