May 31, 2022

Speakers announced for The Next Scientific Revolution

Join The Atlantic on June 28 as we convene leaders from fields such as machine learning, health, sustainability, energy, and more to discuss the current rapid advancements in scientific inquiry that will change how we build a better future. Register to join us virtually, or inquire to attend the in-person event in New York.

Here is a first look at some of the speakers:

Donnel Baird, Founder, BlocPower
Inna Braverman, CEO and Founder of Eco Wave Power
Amy Divaraniya, CEO and Founder at OOVA
Alondra Nelson, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, CEO and Co-Founder, AOA Dx
Rich Riley, CEO, Origins Materials



https://hopin.com/events/next-scientific-revolution



Event Details

Live Virtual and In-Person Event

Tuesday, June 28

Networking begins at 9:30 a.m. ET

Content begins at 10 a.m. ET

In-person venue: City Winery New York



Questions?

Please contact [email protected]
 

May 31, 2022

Colombia's establishment backs Rodolfo Hernandez, who has called himself a follower of Adolf Hitler

Colombia’s Trump May Be Headed for the Presidential Palace

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/world/americas/colombia-presidential-election-hernandez-petro.html



BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia’s political landscape has shifted remarkably in a matter of 24 hours. For months, pollsters predicted that Gustavo Petro, a former rebel-turned-senator making a bid to be the nation’s first leftist president, would head to a June presidential runoff against Federico Gutiérrez, a conservative establishment candidate who had argued that a vote for Mr. Petro amounted to “a leap into the void.’’

Instead, on Sunday, voters gave the top two spots to Mr. Petro and Rodolfo Hernández, a former mayor and wealthy businessman with a populist, anti-corruption platform whose outsider status, incendiary statements and single-issue approach to politics have earned him comparisons to Donald Trump.

The vote — for a leftist who has made a career assailing the conservative political class and for a relatively unknown candidate with no formal party backing — represented a repudiation of the conservative establishment that has governed Colombia for generations. But it also remade the political calculus for Mr. Petro. Now, it is Mr. Petro who is billing himself as the safe change, and Mr. Hernández as the dangerous leap into the void. “There are changes that are not changes,” Mr. Petro said at a campaign event on Sunday night, “they are suicides.”

Mr. Hernández once called himself a follower of Adolf Hitler, has suggested combining major ministries to save money, and says that as president he plans to declare a state of emergency to deal with corruption, leading to fears that he could shut down Congress or suspend mayors. Still, Colombia’s right-wing establishment has begun lining up behind him, bringing many of their votes with them, and making a win for Mr. Petro look like an uphill climb.

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"I am a follower of a great German thinker, Adolf Hitler": Rodolfo Hernández | August 22, 2016 | RCN.

May 31, 2022

The Democratic Deficit in the West

New polling across 9 countries finds citizens displeased with the state of democracy at home. But they support defending democracy in the world—and specifically in Ukraine—within limits.

https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democratic-deficit-in-the-west

Russia’s war on Ukraine has focused the world’s attention on the ideological battle between liberal democracy and totalitarianism—systems of government based on national sovereignty, freedom, the rule of law, and individual rights versus those based on military aggression, societal repression, one-party rule, and state control of people’s lives. President Biden and European leaders clearly understand the stakes in this conflict and so far, they have remained united in supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s criminal actions. As Biden stated in early May, “We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country or stand by as Russia continues its atrocities and aggression.” But as the war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, where do the people of western nations stand on defending liberal democracy and democratic freedoms—both at home and abroad?

To get at this and other fundamental questions about how democratic countries are performing today, Global Progress and YouGov conducted the most comprehensive multi-national survey to date examining public attitudes about democratic delivery at home and beliefs about the war in Ukraine. The survey was conducted in early May 2022 with more than 10,000 respondents in 9 western countries to allow for both in-country analysis and comparisons across national borders. TLP was fortunate to help with the design and analysis of this research, along with earlier waves of Global Progress research released ahead of the G7 meeting in Cornwall and the G20 summit in Rome. Combined, these research projects offer unique empirical findings about transnational attitudes on emerging global challenges from the economy and clean energy to immigration and security threats from Russia and China.



This current research offers a clear picture of an emerging democratic deficit in many western countries. Many citizens surveyed express serious concerns about the state of democracy in their home countries. Yet, on the whole, they continue to support democracy in principle and back actions to defend democracy abroad, specifically in Ukraine, within certain limits.

Many democratic nations are failing to deliver at home. The first batch of critical findings in this research involve attitudes about democracy at home. Respondents were asked, “In general, how well or badly do you think democracy (that is, having people elect politicians to make decisions) is working in your country?” Overall, across all 9 countries, 41 percent of citizens say that democracy is working either fairly badly or very badly in their country, with noticeable variations in beliefs that democracy is working well. For example, as seen in the chart below, roughly 60-70 percent of those in Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Norway believe that democracy is working well in their home countries compared to just 40 percent of those in the United Kingdom, Poland, Spain, France, and the United States.

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May 31, 2022

Dismantling the fossil-fuel economy at the Stockholm+50 UN Global Climate Summit

To address climate change, biodiversity loss and plastic pollution, Stockholm+50 must confront oil, gas and coal head-on.

https://socialeurope.eu/dismantling-the-fossil-fuel-economy-at-stockholm50



Our planet is facing a triple crisis of climate, nature and pollution, with one common cause—the fossil-fuel economy. Oil, gas and coal are at the root of runaway climate disruption, widespread biodiversity loss and pervasive plastic pollution. The conclusion is clear and must be paramount when political leaders gather in Stockholm this week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Any effort to address these existential threats to human and ecological health will mean little as long as the fossil-fuel economy remains intact.

As the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, recently noted, fossil fuels are choking our planet. In the last decade, their combustion accounted for 86 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, for which just a few actors bear overwhelming responsibility. In fact, nearly two-thirds of all CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution can be traced to just 90 polluters, mostly the largest fossil-fuel producers.

Only the beginning

Yet, rather than reining in the polluters, the world’s governments are currently planning to allow more than twice as much fossil-fuel production in 2030 as would be consistent with the goal—agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement—of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. And when it comes to the damage wrought by fossil fuels, higher global temperatures and intensifying extreme weather events are only the beginning.

Last year, the UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, affirmed what frontline communities have long known: fossil-fuel production generates toxic compounds and pollutes air, water and soil. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels was responsible for about one in five deaths worldwide in 2018. Moreover, oil and gas are the building blocks of the toxic chemicals, pesticides and synthetic fertilisers which are pushing ecosystems and species to extinction. These fossil-fuel-based products perpetuate an economic and agro-industrial model which drives deforestation, destroys biodiversity and threatens human health.

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May 31, 2022

Eggs in Purgatory

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019109-eggs-in-purgatory

https://archive.ph/9TxbL







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May 31, 2022

103-year-old Swedish granny breaks world parachuting record

A 103-year-old Swedish woman set the world record for the oldest person to complete a tandem parachute jump on May 30th, saying she planned to celebrate "with a little cake".

https://www.thelocal.se/20220530/103-year-old-swedish-granny-breaks-world-parachuting-record/



“It was wonderful to do this, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Rut Larsson told Swedish news agency TT, adding: “It all went as planned.”

With family and friends waiting on the airfield below, Larsson completed her jump harnessed to parachutist Joackim Johansson in Motala, 240 kilometres (150 miles) southwest of Stockholm. The pair sailed down to the ground smoothly, as helpers rushed to Larsson’s side with her walker to help her get up.



Asked what she saw and felt as she came down, Larsson replied: “Nowadays I don’t see so well, but it felt good”. She said she liked “that you slowly glide down from above, I think it feels nice.”

An official from the Guinness Book of World Records was on hand to record the jump. Larsson, who is 103 years and 259 days old, beat the previous record of 103 years and 181 days.

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May 31, 2022

Polarisation and the threat to democracy

In a polarised US, Sheri Berman writes, the tyranny of unrepresentative minorities represents the main threat to democracy.

https://socialeurope.eu/polarisation-and-the-threat-to-democracy




The leaking of a memo indicating that the United States Supreme Court will likely rule that women do not have a constitutional right to abortion has inflamed political divides which are deeper and more dangerous than those facing any other wealthy democracy. As one recent study put it, the US suffers uniquely high ‘pernicious polarization’—the division of society into political camps whose defining feature is mutual hatred and fear. Such intense polarisation is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including policy gridlock, democratic erosion and even violence.

Since polarisation threatens many European democracies, thinking about the American case may help those trying to avoid similar developments domestically. To paraphrase Karl Marx, it may be that the country that is more polarised shows to others the image of their own future.

Deep cleavages

Perhaps the most obvious cause of damaging polarisation in the US is the translation of the country’s deep economic and social cleavages into political ones. Economically, over the past generation or so the US has been characterised by higher income and wealth inequality, allied to lower social mobility, than any other advanced industrial democracy. The ‘losers’ from these trends—disproportionately low-income, low-education and non-urban whites—have been incorporated into the Republican party, while globalised capitalism’s ‘winners’—highly-educated and skilled urban dwellers—increasingly vote Democratic.

Socially, cleavages over race have long been the main challenge facing American democracy. But, again, over the past generation or so these ethnic cleavages have increasingly aligned with political ones, particularly for the Republican party which receives about 80 per cent of its votes from white citizens. As we know from contemporary developing countries such as Kenya, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as many cases from Europe’s past, when ethnic and political cleavages coincide the results are often deadly. (This trend did diminish somewhat over the past electoral cycle, with the Republican party picking up the support of more conservative Hispanic and even some black voters.)

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May 30, 2022

Bread and Butter: London's best sandwiches

https://www.themodernhouse.com/journal/residents-guide-londons-best-sandwich-shops/



You just can’t beat a good sandwich. No longer relegated to the grab-and-go office lunches of yore, the sandwich has risen the ranks to artisanal status. And where New York’s delis have historically reigned supreme with their full-to-the-brim subs, London’s playful pioneers of the sandwich genre are meeting them with experimental fillings, all manners of bread and new takes on old classics. From a humble bacon sarnie made at a London institution to a fiery Thai baguette coming out of Hackney Road, here’s our guide to the best sandwiches in the city.











1. Max’s Sandwich Shop

Started by self-confessed ‘professional sandwicher’ Max Halley, Max’s Sandwich Shop is a firm favourite for both visitors and locals to Crouch Hill. There’s nothing ordinary about this place: Max likes to riff on the classics with big and bold flavours, from a spring roll-inspired number laced with kimchi, honey and MSG mayo, to a lasagne sandwich stuffed with deep-fried macaroni. A crowd-pleaser is the Et Tu Brute?, an elevated caesar, filled with tender poached chicken, tarragon salsa and crusty garlic croutons. True fans can even grab themselves some merch, too.













2. Sons and Daughters

Think of all your childhood favourites, taken to the next level. Don’t expect your average prawn mayo: here they’re adding prawn crackers, crunchy napa cabbage and hot jalapeños to the mix. There’s umami miso mayo tossed through egg salad, which has the added luxury of truffle crisps. A simple mortadella and taleggio focaccia is spiked with Thai basil and cider vinaigrette. And if you’re looking for something even more experimental, opt for the merguez sausage sando, where a gentle, building heat is paired with salty French fries and tart-pink pickled onions.









3. Common Ground

Sustainably minded cafe Common Ground in Stroud Green champions vegetarian dishes, which means its epic sandwiches are all the more interesting. On its rotating menu of toasties you might find kimchi and gochujang offering some heat or, for a dairy-free delight, there’s one with smoked tempeh, chilli jam and vegan cheese. Sandwiches range from crunchy focaccias to soft brioche subs stacked high with seasonal fillings. In our opinion, park picnics are amiss without the sandwich that bursts with burrata, purple sprouting broccoli and wild-garlic pesto.

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May 30, 2022

Lewandowski: "My era at Bayern is over. I don't see any possibility to continue playing for this

club anymore” 🚨 #FCBayern

“Bayern’s a serious club and I believe they won’t keep me, I don't want to play there anymore. A transfer is the best solution. I hope they don't stop me”.

https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1531258228918599681

May 30, 2022

Dangerous territory ahead. Blue States may eventually choose to defy a RW SCOTUS and/or nationalised

white wing/christofash laws. I fully support that potential defiance if the situation truly warrants it.

I cannot see States like California, NY, or MA, etc etc, going under the RW cosh, choosing to submit, and then outlawing all or almost all abortions, or outlawing contraceptives, or dismantling vast chunks of their gun control schemes.

And the minute Blue States start to defy, Red States may well defy laws THEY do not agree with.

The chaos vortex speeds up.


evidence we may well be headed in that direction:

California's under-21 gun sales ban is unconstitutional, court says

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216744829