article contents that made my eyes pop
Thoughts on stuff I've read, in chronological order.
2023-03-20
Podcasts
Sarah Bakewell on Start the Week, 2023-03-20
Sarah Bakewell spoke about her new book Humanly Possible, 700 years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope.
Check out the episode, it's Humanism - what is it good for - 2023-03-20.
Climate
Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late
IPCC report calls on governments to fast-track climate efforts in ‘every country, every sector and on every timeframe’
Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.
The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.
The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”
In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.
Monday’s final instalment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.
2023-02-22
Books
Martha C. Nussbaum
On Martha C. Nussbaum's book Justice for Animals:
Having forensically dismantled other philosophical arguments for protecting animals, such as the “So Like Us” school of thought that only bestows special treatment on species such as apes and dolphins that are closest to us in intelligence and behaviour, Nussbaum sketches out what a more all-encompassing morality may look like.
Her vision is a global legislative framework that acknowledges and protects animal rights, but she understands full well this won’t happen overnight. “The world’s legal systems are in a primitive condition,” she writes, highlighting, among many examples, the way that the US Animal Welfare Act completely excludes cold-blooded creatures.
She draws a parallel with how women were once treated under the law – as objects or property controlled and used by men. Fast-forward to today and women have rights and freedoms that would have been unthinkable two centuries ago. “The same thing can happen,” writes Nussbaum with a righteous optimism, “with the rights of animals.”
I've read the book. I think there are parts about which Nussbaum has thought a lot. On other parts, not so much. For example, she's thought a lot on whether fish should be eaten rather than vegan products, to, in the next breath, wonder aloud whether vegan fish-y products exist (they do).
Nussbaum is an interesting philosopher; I've not read her prior to this book.
Isabel Waidner
I must soon read We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner.
This part from a review engaged me:
In a recent interview, Waidner said they were “against the idea that formally innovative literature now should be this rarefied thing, of interest to an elite readership”. We Are Made of Diamond Stuff might be the most engaging state-of-the-nation fiction since Anthony Cartwright’s Brexit novel, The Cut. Daringly experimental, this is the cutting edge.
Child abuse
From a recent Al Jazeera article:
Study of 1,000 clothing factories found some fashion firms ‘engaged in unfair practices’, including H&M, Lidl and GAP.
Amazon loses bid to overturn historic union win at Staten Island warehouse
From an NPR article about Amazon:
Amazon should recognize its first unionized warehouse in the U.S., a federal labor official has ruled, rejecting the company's bid to unravel a breakthrough union win on Staten Island.
At stake is the future of labor organizing at Amazon, where unions have struggled for a foothold as the company's web of warehouses has ballooned, making it the U.S.'s second-largest private employer after Walmart.
This bit at the end of the article made me want to throw up a little on NPR:
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's recent financial supporters.
2023-02-20
The latest edition of Molly White's newsletter shows how crypto company Binance tries to hook incel crypto bros:
2023-11-09
The library was supposed to be closed for All Saints Day — a celebration sometimes also called All Hallows Day, the precursor of Halloween. But the library staff had forgotten to close a door. So people came in, thinking the library was open. Some visitors realized the library was technically closed and went home, but others did not.
As people were coming in and out of the library, one librarian (Elf) walked by and noticed the people using the library. She realized what was happening, called her manager and a colleague, and then announced that the library was closing. The visitors calmly folded their books closed and left.
But some left with books.
During that day, 446 people visited the city library. A total of 246 books were borrowed. To date, all the books have been returned.