Been a great few days, Ds closing strong: – Ds big early vote lead keeps growing – Ralston calls NV for Cortez Masto – Last 6 non-partisan natl tracks have Ds up 1.5 pts – Ds favored to maintain Senate in non-partisan polls – red wave may come, not here yet 1/
Here’s some advice for anyone following the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 8: Be ready for a protracted night and perhaps days of waiting before it’s clear whether Republicans or President Joe Biden’s Democrats will control Congress. ✂️
…with dozens of races expected to be close and key states like Pennsylvania already warning it could take days to count every ballot, experts say there’s a great likelihood America goes to bed on election night without knowing who won.
“In relation to knowing the outcomes, we should always move away from talking about Election Day and think as a substitute about election week,” said Nathan Gonzales, who publishes the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections. ✂️
If the fight for the House still looks close as vote tallies start coming in from the West Coast – where there may very well be greater than a dozen tight House races – it may very well be days before control of the chamber is understood, experts said.
California typically takes weeks to count all its ballots, partly since it counts ballots postmarked by Election Day even in the event that they arrive days afterward. Nevada and Washington state also allow late ballots if postmarked by Nov. 8, slowing down the march to final results. ✂️
It might take longer, perhaps weeks longer, to know which party will control the Senate, with close contests in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia more likely to determine final control.
And just remember this as you go to bed tonight. It’d assist you to sleep higher.
Pollsters Have ‘No F*cking Idea What’s Going to Occur’ This Election
If the pollsters and handicappers find yourself being spectacularly flawed on Election Night, there’s one group that won’t be too surprised: the pollsters and handicappers themselves. ✂️
In response to Dave Wasserman, the U.S. House editor on the Cook Political Report, the massive problem is that “response rates suck.”
“We’re right down to 1 percent of individuals on a great day who’re willing to consult with a pollster without cost,” he told The Day by day Beast.
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🍿 Repellent Republicans Rushing toward Wreck 🍿
Virginia’s governor arrange a tip line to crack down on CRT. Parents used it for other reasons
Also see the DKos diary Walter Einenkel published about this last Thursday.
Complaints about special education violations. Praise for teachers. Concerns about academic rigor and options. These are a few of the predominant themes in a sampling of the emails sent to a so-called tip line arrange by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this 12 months for folks to report, as he put it, “any instances where they feel that their fundamental rights are being violated” and schools are engaging in “inherently divisive practices.” The e-mail tip line was part of a bigger campaign by the governor to root out the teaching of critical race theory. But few of the information flag the sorts of practices Youngkin was describing.
The records became public this week through a settlement between the governor’s office and 13 media organizations, including the USA TODAY Network, which in April had sued for the emails after requests to see the correspondence were denied. ✂️
A spokeswoman for the governor confirmed on Thursday that the tip line was deactivated in September, having “received little to no volume.” Constituents, she said, are still in a position to send confidential correspondence to the governor through other methods. ✂️
If the sampling of emails is any indication, many parents are underwhelmed with Youngkin’s education achievements so far. And that would have a bearing on the midterms.
Lots of the parents [special education advocate Kandise] Lucas knows are “going to send his whole party a powerful message on this next election about being betrayed,” she said.
U.S. Supreme Court dismisses Michigan redistricting challenge to Congress map
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the appeal of Michigan Republicans who had challenged the state’s recent congressional map as drawn by the redistricting commission last 12 months.
The Republicans had argued that the congressional map unjustifiably deviated from constitutional requirements for apportionment by failing to have more equal population among the many 13 districts, pointing to a roughly 1,200-person difference between the biggest and smallest districts by population.
That they had sought to enjoin the state from using the congressional map in any election in Michigan; nevertheless, a three-judge district court in April denied their request for a preliminary injunction, finding the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim and calling the state’s justification for the “small” population deviation “undisputedly legitimate.”
The justices on their Monday order list dismissed the appeal as “moot,” without further explanation, meaning the case not presented an open legal query. The brand new congressional boundaries might be utilized in Tuesday’s general election.
Former President Donald Trump mocked Ron DeSantis at his Saturday night rally—calling the Florida governor “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
And hours later, Trump found himself in hot water with fellow conservatives who weren’t pleased that he’d taken aim on the increasingly popular DeSantis. ✂️
“Trump isn’t going to have the opportunity to take this one [DeSantis] down with a dumb nickname. He higher have greater than that up his sleeve,” [right-wing Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh] wrote. “Also, nice job launching your public attack against the preferred conservative governor in America three days before the midterms once we’re all imagined to be showing a united front.”
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The media misbehaving
I’ve felt the necessity for this category for a very long time, so here it’s. I’m inaugurating it with a few Wonkette’s trademark snarkfests. The primary takes on the NYTimes, which unsurprisingly is a favourite goal for his or her insistence on tweaking articles to make them fit pre-determined story lines.
Latest York Times Will Have Its Red Wave If It Has To Make It Up Itself!
…in a story last Thursday on polling the Times and Siena College conducted in “4 archetypal swing districts,” the second paragraph soberly proclaims that the polling “offers fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall because the party dominated amongst voters who care most concerning the economy.”
That sure appears like bad news for Democrats, especially in those 4 bellwether districts. A minimum of it appears like bad news until you get to the third paragraph, which notes that the actual polling results show the Democratic candidates “were still tied or ahead in all 4 districts — three of which were carried by Mr. Biden in 2020.” What’s more, we learn within the eleventh paragraph that although Biden’s approval rating “doesn’t top 44 percent in any” of the 4 districts, the 4 Democrats who currently hold the seats are “running ahead of the president’s poor rankings.” ✂️
In a Twitter thread on the information that went into the article, coauthor Nate Cohn said that “on balance, the polls are higher for Democrats than I might have guessed given our national polling,” and repeated the purpose that Democrats cannot afford to lose greater than five seats and still hang on to regulate of the House.
Dude, the Ds in your polls are collectively outperforming Biden, who won the favored vote by 4.5 points! I do not know if this can be a case where you do not need to throw your editors under the bus, but these are good polls for Ds and the narrative within the story doesn’t match the information.
Cohn stammered a bit concerning the “overall House picture” and suggested Silver hadn’t considered it, and suggested that the strong showing for Davids in Kansas was an “outlier,” but couldn’t quite explain why data showing the House will likely be a squeaker means a Red wave. ✂️
Latest York Times politics editors, go fuck yourself.
The second is a much-deserved evisceration of Glenn Kessler.
WaPo Fact Checker Shocked, SHOCKED That Anyone Would Say GOP Wants To Kill Medicare!
Earlier this month, Glenn Kessler, whose Washington Post column is whimsically called “the Fact Checker,” grudgingly acknowledged that Hillary Clinton never had any classified emails on her server — although he did crankily accuse her of hair-splitting that she hadn’t done. We figured it would not take very long for Kessler to atone for that, and by golly, here he’s with a recent column (free gift linky) giving Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) ALL THE PINOCCHIOS for a tweet by which she promised to guard Social Security and Medicare from privatization. Shame on her!
Republicans plan to finish Social Security and Medicare in the event that they take back the Senate.
Washington seniors who’ve spent their lives paying into these programs deserve higher—and I’ll keep fighting to ensure that they get it.
Kessler was quick to swat down Murray’s untruth,mentioning that,in the mean time, Republicans don’t even have a proper plan to finish either program, so Murray is four-alarum lying! Heck, he could have gone farther and said that Republicans have not had any actual plans to do virtually any governing for years, because trolling is so way more satisfying than policy.
Kessler explains that Murray is engaging in one in every of those scurrilous campaign tactics that jaded experts like him call
“Mediscare” attacks — an effort to warn seniors that Republicans will take away their hard-earned advantages.
Then he reassures seniors not to fret, since “There is no such thing as a such plan.”
That is an arguable claim all its own. It relies on the way you define “plan.” There is certainly not a policy document signed by all Republicans stating “we’ll end Social Security and Medicare.” But there’s a protracted history of Republican calls to denationalise or limit Medicare and Social Security, including multiple examples from candidates on the ballot this 12 months. ✂️
[Kessler concludes:]
That is yet one more example by which Democrats strain to conjure up a nonexistent GOP plan regarding Social Security and Medicare. Murray earns 4 Pinocchios.
, we’re pondering that perhaps the column’s name needs to be modified from the “Fact Checker” to the “Explainer-Awayer”
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Excellent news from my corner of the world
Landlord rescinds 50% rent spike after inexpensive housing tenant rallies
When people organize and persist in fighting back, they typically win.
After low-income tenants in inexpensive housing units on the Prescott Apartments in North Portland exposed that their landlord was implementing 50% rent increases, the tenants now tell KOIN 6 News the owner is not any longer increasing their rent for the rest of the inexpensive housing program.
Kelsey Schreiner is a single mother raising her 4-year-old daughter in her one-bedroom apartment.
Schreiner and dozens of others in the town’s inexpensive housing program were facing a virtually 50% rent increase — reaching upwards of greater than $400 for some tenants.
Schreiner formed a union among the many tenants within the inexpensive housing units. KOIN 6 News followed along for weeks as they hosted rallies, demonstrations, had meetings and passed out flyers — calling on their landlord to make a more reasonable rent increase.
“So, we’ve fought really, really hard for the last two months and this recent agreement for us means we get to maintain our homes,” Schreiner said.
Most Oregonians would prioritize protecting the environment to spur economic growth, relatively than rolling back environmental regulations on corporations, based on a recent survey. Most also said they might vote for candidates within the November general election who’re committed to reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
About 1,500 adults participated between Sept. 13 to 21 in a web based questionnaire from the nonpartisan Oregon Values and Beliefs Center, based in Portland. The questions were centered on respondents’ attitudes about climate change and the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Most said state government shouldn’t chill out environmental regulations to make it easier for corporations to operate in Oregon. About 60% said maintaining a healthy environment was more essential for attracting people and businesses to the state. ✂️
About half of Republicans thought protecting the environment needs to be prioritized compared with greater than three-quarters of Democrats. ✂️
Just 20% of survey respondents said Oregon’s environmental regulations needs to be less strict than they’re currently. Oregon has a few of the most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and strictest environmental regulations within the country.
[An Oregon strategy] to stop an anti-government revolution
In eastern Oregon, one strategy has proven effective at inoculating communities against extremist ideology. ✂️
…in Harney County, the work of conserving the [Malheur National Wildlife Refuge] and its surrounding rangelands has continued almost uninterrupted [since the failed occupation by the Bundys in 2016]. Here, locals consider the occupation a mere bump within the road — though its failure was no accident, based on political ecologist Peter Walker, whose book, Sagebrush Collaboration, tracks the refuge takeover from begin to fizzle. Thanks largely to a land-management strategy that local ranchers, conservationists and federal employees developed 15 years before the Bundys arrived, the community was largely inoculated against their simplistic solutions and fiery but empty rhetoric. Through years of homegrown collaboration led partly by the nonprofit High Desert Partnership, the community was already tackling lots of the issues that inspired the Bundys to take up arms: fences, water access, poverty. To many locals, these weren’t ideological struggles, but tangible problems they were solving together. ✂️
Researchers say that recent national and global upheavals — economic recession, the pandemic and the accelerating effects of climate change — have encouraged an extra embrace of extremist views, as people on each left and right feel increasingly helpless within the face of disaster and ignored by those in power.
Harney County’s approach is, in some ways, an antidote to that sense of alienation. “Only a few people would go away from one in every of our collaborative meetings saying they weren’t heard,” said Brenda Smith, director of the High Desert Partnership, which now oversees six collaboratives working on issues from wildfire prevention to youth empowerment. The organization was founded in 2005 by Gary Marshall, a neighborhood rancher, and Chad Karges, then director of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, who realized that the realm’s history of litigation and conflict over public lands had created more problems than solutions. Today, Karges said, restoration work on Forest Service land is generating biomass that heats local institutions; planned fire-resilience projects on Bureau of Land Management acreage involve a once-unlikely alliance of ranchers, scientists, tribal members and government staffers; and refuge staff have partnered with nearby landowners to remove invasive carp. None of this was possible 20 years ago, he said, and the collaboratives are still gaining momentum.
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Excellent news from across the nation
4 million NYC employees will now see how much jobs pay before they apply—here’s what to know
🎩 to Laura Clawson for her DKos diary about this last Wednesday. I assumed the news was essential enough to re-post.
After months of waiting, landmark laws affecting Latest York City’s roughly 4 million private-sector employees is finally going into effect: Starting Nov. 1, most employers in Latest York City might be required to list the salary range on all posted job ads, promotions and transfer opportunities. ✂️
The law specifically states that starting Nov. 1, “employers promoting jobs in Latest York City must include a great faith salary range for each job, promotion, and transfer opportunity advertised.”
A “good faith” range is one the employer “truthfully believes on the time they’re listing the job commercial that they’re willing to pay the successful applicant(s),” the Latest York City Commission on Human Rights says.
Employers must post the minimum and maximum salary on offer for a specific role when it’s listed on an internal job board, in addition to external sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and other job search platforms. It also applies to any written description of an open job that’s printed on a flyer, distributed at a job fair or submitted to newspaper classifieds.
The salary requirement is particular to base salary, whether it’s annual or hourly, but doesn’t require employers to list things like medical insurance, break day, severance pay, extra time pay, commissions, suggestions, bonuses, stock, 401(k) matching or other sorts of compensation.
Ranges have to be specific and may’t be open-ended (for instance, $15 an hour and up).
It’s Official: Business Boomed on Latest York’s Automotive-Free Streets
At the height of Latest York City’s pandemic, 83 miles of city streets were closed to traffic to present city-dwellers more public space for social distancing. In response to a recent evaluation, the Open Streets program had financial advantages, too: Patrons flocked to outdoor dining along these car-free stretches.
Town says restaurants and bars on popular Open Streets made extra money than those on trafficked roads. And those self same streets saw recent eateries open whilst pandemic shutdowns threatened businesses in all places.
At the same time as some critics charge that the rise in al fresco eating has increased congestion and litter, advocates insist it’s a cultural and economic boon to the town — a position now backed by empirical evidence. “Latest York offers cities evidence that the identical strategies that may bring life into the open during a public emergency also can help cities recuperate long after,” said former transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
She noticed many ladies in STEM were ignored. So she’s written greater than 1,700 Wikipedia pages about diverse pioneers.
Throughout history, female scientists, engineers and mathematicians have modified the world. But while their accomplishments have been massive, their names and their stories have rarely been publicized. Physicist Jess Wade desired to share the stories of great STEM pioneers who could also be ignored – and he or she got here up with a novel technique to try this: writing Wikipedia pages. ✂️
“I became really eager about ways we could try to improve that diversity but additionally improve the way in which we have fun and honor the incredible scientists who’re from historically marginalized backgrounds — so people who find themselves women, or people of color, or people who find themselves LGBTQ+ — who historically have been underrepresented in science,” she said.
In her free time, Wade scours the web to gather information, then she gets to work writing Wikipedia pages. She’s written greater than 1,700 to date. She said it’s all the time shocking to her when someone notable doesn’t have a page – but a couple of stand out.
Like Kizzmekia Corbett, a viral immunologist and assistant professor at Harvard who developed the technique to artificially create spike proteins to create the Moderna MRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. “Should you think concerning the type of individuals who probably had essentially the most impact on all of our lives, up to now two years, Kizzie is way up there, right. She’s world leader in facilitating some type of return to normality,” Wade said.
A surprise deal has been reached within the Ethiopian civil war with either side agreeing to halt their two-year conflict which led to 1000’s of deaths and warnings of a famine. ✂️
The agreement between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces should allow aid deliveries to resume. Almost 90% of individuals within the northern Tigray region need food aid, the World Health Organization says. A few third of the region’s children are affected by malnutrition.
Even though it’s a serious breakthrough, it’ll be received with a point of caution. This just isn’t the primary ceasefire within the conflict – a previous one was breached in August, just months after either side committed to it. This time though, the agreements have gone further. The Ethiopian government officials and representatives of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have signed as much as a disarmament plan and the restoration of crucial services, including aid supplies.
“Ethiopia has just one national defence force,” reads the joint statement. The TPLF has made a serious concession – to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate fighters into the federal army.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has described the agreement as “monumental” and committed to implementing it. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who mediated the deal agreed after every week of talks in South Africa, said it was only the start of the peace process. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “a welcome first step, which we hope can begin to bring some solace to the hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians which have really suffered during this conflict”.
UK law firm to sue Wagner PMC and founder Evgeny Prigozhin on behalf of Ukraine
The UK law firm McCue Jury & Partners announced Wednesday that it is going to file a lawsuit against Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner private military company (PMC), which he founded, on behalf of Ukrainians.
“Wagner’s use of terrorism to realize Putin’s goals is borne out through their war crimes, including using torture, murder, and rape as weapons of war to terrorise civilian populations into submission. […] Not only is Putin’s war in Ukraine an inherently illegal one, but it’s also illegal in the way in which it’s being waged—purposely inflicting significant loss and damage on Ukrainian civilians,” the firm said in a press release.
In response to the statement, the lawyers intend to pay for the case through crowdfunding. If enough money is raised, they said, the suit could “turn right into a billion-pound reparations claim once the total mass of potential claimants are joined,” and will expand to “include the likes of Putin himself, in addition to his kleptocratic cronies who’ve supported his illegal war.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Concord catering company and the founding father of the Wagner PMC, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2016 and EU sanctions since 2020. The businessman denied having any connection to the mercenary group until September 2022, when he said publicly that he founded Wagner on May 1, 2014, to “protest Russians” within the Donbas.
Saint Javelin now has a YouTube channel!
And it’s awesome. (If by any likelihood you’re unaware of Saint Javelin and the NAFO fellas, click this linkand this link.)
Here’s a taste of Saint Javelin’s YouTube offerings:
Misinformation Experiment Has Potential to ‘Inoculate’ Hundreds of thousands of Social Media Users
Briefly exposing social media users to the tricks behind misinformation boosts awareness of harmful online falsehoods, says recent research—and Google is about to deploy an anti-disinformation campaign based on the findings.
Short animations placed in YouTube’s Ad slot gave viewers a taste of the strategies behind misinformation, based on the large online experiment led by the University of Cambridge. Working with Jigsaw, a unit inside Google dedicated to tackling threats to open societies, a team of psychologists from the schools of Cambridge and Bristol created 90-second clips designed to familiarize users with manipulation techniques reminiscent of scapegoating and deliberate incoherence.
This “pre-bunking” strategy preemptively exposes people to tropes at the basis of malicious propaganda, so that they can higher discover falsehoods online—no matter material. Researchers behind the Inoculation Science project compare it to a vaccine: by giving people a “micro-dose” of misinformation prematurely, it helps prevent them falling for it in future — an idea based on what social psychologist’s call “inoculation theory.”
The findings, published in Science Advances, come from seven experiments involving a complete of just about 30,000 participants—including the primary “real world field study” of inoculation theory on a social media platform. The team reports that even a single viewing of one in every of the film clips increased awareness of misinformation.
[Here’s their clip on scapegoating:]
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Excellent news in medicine
Latest RSV vaccines are coming. This may be very, excellent news.
RSV generally causes cold symptoms but also can result in severe lung inflammation or infection in very young and really old people. And it’s began off cold season with a bang: As of October 22, babies under a 12 months old were being hospitalized at rates six times higher than they were at the identical point in 2019, and the general hospitalization rate was seven times higher for people of all ages.
Every 12 months, a whole lot of youngsters die of RSV, and tens of 1000’s more are hospitalized. But for a change, this 12 months brings some excellent news: It is perhaps the last time the virus wreaks this sort of havoc.
After a long time of failed efforts to provide an RSV vaccine, several highly effective ones are finally on the verge of approval. On Tuesday, Pfizer announced that in a trial, its vaccine — which is given to pregnant people so infants are protected at birth (more on that later) — prevented 69 percent of severe RSV cases amongst infants 6 months and younger. Also on the horizon are vaccines for older adults, and recent monoclonal antibodies (i.e., human-made proteins that function like antibodies in our immune systems) to assist prevent infections.
All told, experts say these products are effective enough to stop greater than three-quarters of severe disease in each age groups.
Experts anticipate these products may very well be broadly available to be used inside one to 2 years — if drug approval and suggestion processes on the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention go easily. That implies that, barring any surprises, babies and adults within the US could have the opportunity to depend on them for RSV protection as soon as next fall. Expect global vaccine authorities to weigh in on these products soon, as well.
Major breakthrough in cancer research: Papers reveal ‘dark matter’ that contributes to disease’s growth
Cancer research is progressing at mind-boggling speed.
Two major studies published in Nature have uncovered a recent level of control of cancer gene activity inside tumors, termed cancer’s “dark matter.”
The revelation shows that epigenetics, cells controlling gene activity, play a vital role in the event of cancer. Cancers are frequently tested for DNA mutations alone, which may miss this level of control, thereby failing to predict how cancers may behave and reply to treatment.
Professor Trevor Graham, Director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer on the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), said in a press release: “We have unveiled an additional level of control for a way cancers behave – something we liken to cancer’s ‘dark matter.’ For years, our understanding of cancer has focused on genetic mutations which permanently change the DNA code. But our research has shown that the way in which the DNA folds up can change which genes are read without altering the DNA code and this could be very essential in determining how cancers behave.” ✂️
“I hope our work will change the way in which we take into consideration cancer and its treatment – and will ultimately affect the way in which patients are treated. Genetic testing for cancer mutations only gives us a part of the image a few person’s cancer – and is blind to ‘epigenetic’ changes to how genes are read. By testing for each genetic and epigenetic changes, we could, potentially, way more accurately predict which treatments will work best for a specific person’s cancer,” said Graham.
Delicious Cancer Breakthrough: Pomegranates Found to Significantly Fuel Tumor-Fighting Immune Cells
A recent study shows that a substance present in pomegranates significantly boosts the immune system to fight cancer—triggering a relentless supply of limitless rejuvenated T cells.
German scientists studying therapies for colorectal cancer discovered that a metabolite within the red fruit, generally known as urolithin-A, rejuvenates immune T cells to make them higher at fighting tumors. ✂️
When the pomegranate agent is introduced, old and damaged mitochondria within the T cells are removed and replaced by recent, functional ones. This changes the genetic make up of the T cells, that are then more able to fighting the tumor.
“Our findings are particularly exciting because the main focus just isn’t on the tumor cell but on the immune system—the natural defense against cancer,” said Dr. Dominic Denk of the Frankfurt University Hospital and first writer of the study. “That is where reliable therapeutic approaches are still lacking in the fact of colorectal cancer patients. By improving the mixture therapy with existing immunotherapies, the study opens up meaningful possibilities.”
“We hope to make use of this to sustainably improve the therapy of colorectal cancer, but additionally of other cancers.”
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Excellent news in science
Record-breaking chip can transmit entire web’s traffic per second
This is just astounding. I actually can’t wrap my brain around it.
The speed record for data transmission using a single light source and optical chip has been shattered once more. Engineers have transmitted data at a blistering rate of 1.84 petabits per second (Pbit/s), almost twice the worldwide web traffic per second.
It’s hard to overstate just how briskly 1.84 Pbit/s really is. Your house web might be getting a couple of hundred megabits per second, or when you’re really lucky, you is perhaps on a 1-gigabit and even 10-gigabit connection – but 1 petabit is one million gigabits. It’s greater than 20 times faster than ESnet6, the upcoming upgrade to the scientific network utilized by the likes of NASA.
Much more impressive is the very fact this recent speed record was set using a single light source and a single optical chip. An infrared laser is beamed right into a chip called a frequency comb that splits the sunshine into a whole lot of various frequencies, or colours. Data can then be encoded into the sunshine by modulating the amplitude, phase and polarization of every of those frequencies, before recombining them into one beam and transmitting it through optical fiber.
In experiments, researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology used the setup to transmit data at 1.84 Pbit/s, encoded in 223 wavelength channels, down a 7.9-km-long (4.9-mile) optical fiber that contained 37 separate cores. For reference, the global web bandwidth has been estimated at just shy of 1 Pbit/s, meaning this technique could potentially handle all of that without delay with loads of room to grow.
Vibrations From Mobile Phones Traveling on Bridges Will be Used to Assess Structural Integrity
Data collected by mobile phones may very well be used to evaluate the structural integrity of bridges, suggests a recent study, informing potential maintenance requirements and keeping them in motion for 30% longer.
Using the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for instance, researchers showed that smartphones can capture the identical kind of knowledge about bridge vibrations picked up by stationary sensors. The findings suggest that crowdsourced monitoring may very well be an inexpensive and convenient technique to monitor the structural integrity of transportation infrastructure worldwide, and will potentially increase the lifespan of bridges by as much as 30%. ✂️
The structural health of bridges will likely be visually assessed by engineers on-site, which is commonly time consuming and infrequent, or measured using static sensors incorporated into the bridge, that are expensive. ✂️
Publishing their work within the journal Nature Communications Engineering, a team at MIT developed an Android-based app that collects data while travelling across a bridge which they compared with traditional bridge-based sensors.
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Excellent news for the environment
This Chilean desert sometimes fills with flowers – and it’s becoming a national park
How wonderful that a minimum of a part of this unique ecosystem might be protected!
The Atacama Desert, the world’s driest non-polar desert, in bloom after heavy rainfall
Chile’s Atacama desert is one in every of the world’s most fascinating places. The sunniest place on Earth and the planet’s driest non-polar desert, the Atacama is understood for its spectacular lava fields, vast salt flats and abandoned mineral mines. Being so desolate, it’s also renowned for its astronomical observatories and stargazing. But there’s one other natural spectacle that actually makes it unique.
The Atacama is a reasonably barren place but, every three to 5 years, the desert spectacularly bursts into bloom. If the realm gets particularly heavy rainfall in the course of the winter season, over 200 species of plant flower within the desert and create a vivid carpet of color. And now, excitingly, huge bits of the Atacama are set to be made right into a national park. Earlier this month, Chilean president Gabriel Boric announced plans to guard the realm from development and fund research into its ecosystems.
Because it stands, the desert is a little bit of a flashpoint for ongoing conflicts between environmental activists and corporations mining for lithium. Demand for the rare metal is soaring, because it’s utilized in batteries for electric vehicles and other consumer products. As yet, the precise boundaries of the protected area haven’t been confirmed. Nonetheless, the park is unlikely to cover the entire desert, which stretches over 41,000 square miles between Chile’s Pacific coast and the Andes.
No date has been set yet for the formal designation. But when it does occur, the Atacama will turn into Chile’s forty-fourth national park. From the glaciers of northern Patagonia to the vineyards of the country’s middle regions, much of the country’s landscape is already officially protected. And now the miraculous blooms of the Atacama can even be secured for future generations.
There was more evidence this week that the very best technique to protect forests is at hand them over to Indigenous communities.
A study published in Current Biology, a scientific journal, found that the world’s healthiest, most biodiverse forests are situated on protected Indigenous lands.
The authors said the findings show that protecting Indigenous and human rights just isn’t only compatible with conservation goals, but vital to achieving them.
A growing body of research has drawn similar conclusions. See three examples of community forest stewardship in motion here.
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Excellent news for and about animals
Dropped at you by Rosy, Nora, and Rascal.
Ukrainian military dogs gain recent legal rights as service members
The Ukrainian Border Guard announced via social media…that they’re codifying recent standards of look after the dogs in uniform. Search and attack dogs will turn into an official a part of the Ukrainian Border Guard service. Like their human counterparts, these dogs might be tasked with looking for and detaining enemies.
All dogs could be retired at age 8, although they’re permitted to work past that age in the event that they still prove in a position to accomplish that.
Once retired, four-legged veterans might be sent to civilian homes to be taken care of of their twilight years. The precise text of the announcement (in translation) reads that they could be transferred to “legal entities of any type of ownership, with their consent in accordance with the laws.” Reading the text in translation, it is actually unclear whose consent is required – the dog or the handler. Presumably, it’s referring to the handler’s consent. ✂️
The Ukrainian military has made extensive use of four-legged soldiers because the outbreak of the war in February 2022. In May, Ukrainian mine-sniffing Jack-Russel Terrier, Patron (along along with his handler), was awarded a Medal for Dedicated Services by President Zelensky. Patron has also amassed a dedicated following on social media.
Also in May, the USA sent over canine body armor for the furriest members of the Ukrainian military. “Now, our four-legged helpers who might be serving in dangerous areas can even be protected,” the Ukrainian State Border Guard said at the moment.
Top Gun Owl Kitty!
Nora can’t resist posting each recent video from her hero (and fellow Portlander!) Owl Kitty.
This 120-Million 12 months Old Bird/Dinosaur Combo Is Teaching Scientists How Birds Got here to Be
A bizarre cross between a bird and a dinosaur had blue, brown and gray feathers, a protracted tail, and small teeth. What’s more, their brain morphology is perfectly transitional between bird and reptile, with a brain likely built to smell like reptiles, but additionally to see well in daylight like birds.
Jeholornis lived 120 million years ago, and recently scientists have digitally-reconstructed its skull for the primary time on the Field Museum in Chicago.
“Should you take a look at the skulls of dinosaurs…” said co-author Professor Matteo Fabbri on the museum, “…they’ve very large olfactory bulbs, and the optic lobes within the midbrain are reduced. They probably had a excellent sense of smell and never great sight, which may be very reptilian. And alternatively, when you take a look at modern birds, they do the reverse. They’ve small olfactory bulbs, and really large optic lobes. Jeholornis falls in the center.”
Raven-sized Jeholornis is the earliest known animal to eat fruit. The international team chosen the very best specimen unearthed from prehistoric graveyards in China. ✂️
Dr. Fabbri said the story of Jeholornis is “not only different from dinosaurs and modern birds, it’s different from other early birds too. It just isn’t a simple evolutionary story. Its special position as probably the most primitive birds in the course of the dinosaur-bird transition determines completing its story will reveal the true scenery of that critical evolutionary period, and in addition, tell us why and the way the trendy birds—the one living dinosaurs—evolved to be what we see now.”
And eventually, Future Crunch posted this tweet with the comment “The character documentary all of us need right away.”
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Art break
Self-Taught Teen Sews and Models Her Own Beautiful Historically-Inspired Dresses
It’s astounding that these extraordinary dresses were created by a self-taught designer/seamstress.
Eighteen-year-old Angela Clayton adores historical fashion and costumery, taking her love one step further by sewing her own garments. The seamstress crafts long, flowing dresses fit for royalty and exquisite gowns that might make Cinderella the belle of the ball (and not using a Fairy Godmother). Her projects take an incredible amount of skill, featuring complicated ruching, hand applique, and bodice forming. When each garment is complete, Clayton models her handiwork, taking over the look and attitude of the character who has inspired her.
With such complex patterning and construction, it’d surprise you to learn that Clayton began sewing only three years ago. Originally, she was eager about creating things for cosplay, because it combined her love of making, makeup, photography, and dressing up. Since then, she has also translated her interest in history into garments that were worn many centuries ago, including the Renaissance and mid 1800s.
Clayton is nearly entirely self taught. Due to the Web in addition to some trial and error, she dove into the hobby head first. Despite her lack of formal instruction, she’s not afraid to tackle the hard stuff. “If I need to create something,” she writes, “I’ll do something no matter how complicated it’s.” This attitude will undoubtedly keep her learning and growing, leading her to her future goal of working within the costume industry. “I’m undecided what job would suit me best, but I do know I need to spend my life doing what I really like, so it has to one way or the other involve sewing and dresses.”
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Hot lynx
www.nytimes.com/… The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine. A captivating and indispensable deep dive into the connection between “Putin’s assault on Ukraine and his attack on American democracy.” “Putin’s American adventure is perhaps best understood as advance payment for a geopolitical grail closer to home: a vassal Ukrainian state.”
www.communityheartandsoul.org/… How One Small Town Practices Democracy. “Many voters in a small town working together to make small, and ultimately big changes.”
www.nationalgeographic.com/… How mail-in voting began on Civil War battlefields. “From Kentucky to Vermont, voting rights were prolonged to those distant from the polls for the primary time—though not without significant legal challenges and public skepticism.”
www.newyorker.com/… The Shoddy Conclusions of the Man Shaping the Gun-Rights Debate. “John Lott is essentially the most influential pro-gun researcher within the country. But his methods and findings have been repeatedly debunked.” It was Lott’s work that led to a federal court overturning California’s AR-style rifle ban. Vital reading.
lithub.com/… A Sense of Belonging: Contained in the Only U.S. School Dedicated to Teaching Refugee Girls. “The Global Village Project, situated on the second floor of a church on the outskirts of Atlanta, teaches roughly forty young women, all born into conflict. ” A really inspiring article.
www.theatlantic.com/… ABBA’s Triumphant return. An ecstatic, truly mind-blowing review of ABBA’s “95-minute digital hallucination…4 figures appear onstage before us, …denser than holograms, more shimmeringly charged than human beings, with a type of atomic brightness, composites of sunshine and longing.”
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Wherever is herd…
A tip of the hat to 2thanks for creating this handy info sheet for all Gnusies recent and old!
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days every week:
Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup. Heart-stirring and soul-healing introduction and sometimes memes to succumb to.
Sundays: 2thanks. A temporary roundup of Roundups, a retrospective, a smorgasbord, a bulletin board, an oasis, a watering hole, a thunder of hooves, a wellness, a spot for beginners to learn the principles of the veldt.
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET day-after-day! After a protracted day, Gnusies meet within the evening shade and proceed sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. Within the words of NotNowNotEver: “hpg ably continues the tradition of Evening Shade.” Find Evening Shades here.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6:00 p.m. Central Time. Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In the hunt for a TOTW diary? Look hereor here.
For more information concerning the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one in every of the primary comments in our morning diaries.
As a substitute of my usual motion steps, today I’m urging all you activists on the market to take a breather. Here’s some excellent advice from Mindful:
It might feel inappropriate to take time to rest, or to search out pleasure, and even take pleasure in some positivity within the midst of our heated social, political, and environmental climate. But I need you all to know that it’s crucial for us to acknowledge the importance of our own self-care and to act upon it. Self-care just isn’t frivolous; self-care is a radical act of affection.
Yes, there continues to be work to be done. Lots of work to be done. But we don’t have to do it today. Today we are able to rest. Tomorrow we are able to rest. After which the subsequent day and the subsequent. We will pre-game for the vacations and take into consideration all that we’ve got to be pleased about, personally, and collectively. After which, those that are ready can stand up, dust off, unravel and lift up the remaining of us.
Self-care is a movement in and of itself. … Self-care is an act of resistance.
Listed here are 3 ways to practice self-care today:
Allow yourself to (finally) unplug from the news and social media for a couple of days. Turn off your alerts and push motivations, turn off the TV and don’t access social media. If you have to access it for work or otherwise, limit your time and don’t engage or comment on posts. It’s not perpetually – it’s a couple of days of peace and being off the grid.
Recognize if you find yourself in need of self-care after which reply to that need. Sometimes taking time for self-care may impact the lives of those around you (for instance, that you must take the day without work from work or ask for somebody to look at the youngsters). Inform those around you that you simply are responding to a private need but don’t feel the necessity to ask for permission.
Have a self-care checklist ready that has dozens of options tailored only for you. These self-care options can range from scheduling a mid-day call with a friend to drawing a bubble bath. Having this list ready is vital because if you find yourself on the verge of burnout, it’s possible you’ll not have the capability to give you the choices in that moment.
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Closing music
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Due to all of you in your smarts, your hearts, and
your faithful attendance at our every day Gathering of the Herd.
