Mother Jones
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Look, if we’re going to have a wall on the Southern border and the Northern border, then I want a wall along the Western border too. I won’t feel safe until we build one.
Shame about the view, but national security comes first.
Excerpt from:
Why Is No One Talking About the Menace of the Pacific Ocean?
Mother Jones
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It’s been obvious to me for a while that the best way to get under Donald Trump’s skin is to attack him where it really hurts. Don’t call him a clown or an entertainer. That’s water off a duck. But he genuinely cares about his reputation as a dealmaker. Hit that. Or his reputation for being tough. Hit that. National Review’s Rich Lowry finally took this approach last night, and it worked:
“Let’s be honest: Carly cut his balls off with the precision of a surgeon — and he knows it,” Lowry said on “The Kelly File.” Host Megyn Kelly was shocked. “You can’t say that!” she said, before covering her eyes with a hand. “You can’t say that.”
….Trump quickly exploded on Twitter and wrote in a tweet: “Incompetent @RichLowry lost it tonight on @FoxNews. He should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him!”
….”I love how Mr. Anti-PC now wants the FCC to fine me,” Lowry tweeted, adding a hashtag: #pathetic….Lowry finally threw up a white flag and offered this tweeted compromise: “A deal for you, Donald: if you apologize to Carly for your boorish insult, I might stop noting how she cut your b**** off.”
See? Easy peasy. Now I want someone to take on his dealmaking acumen. It shouldn’t be too hard. That should really get him hot under the collar.
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Mother Jones
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Wow. It’s not just half a million cars in the United States. It turns out that Volkswagen installed its emissions cheating software in 11 million cars worldwide, mostly in Europe:
The German automaker said it was setting aside the equivalent of half a year’s profits — 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.3 billion — to cover the cost of fixing the cars to comply with pollution standards and to cover other expenses, which are likely to include fines as well as responses to civil lawsuits from angry customers.
$7.3 billion is just the start of things for VW. This is going to end up costing them a lot more than that. And when you count in lost sales, who knows? This could be a life-threatening event for them.
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Mother Jones
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Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee try to calm our fears about robots taking all our jobs. Sure, some jobs will disappear, they say, but others will be created:
For example, machines are currently dominating the jobs in routine information processing. “Computer,” after all, used to be an actual job title of a person who sat and added long rows of numbers. Now it is, well, an actual computer.
On the other hand, jobs such as data scientist didn’t used to exist, but because computers have made enormous data sets analyzable, we now have new jobs for people to interpret these huge pools of information. In the tumult of our economy, even as old tasks get automated away, along with demand for their corresponding skills, the economy continues to create new jobs and industries.
This may not be quite as reassuring as they intended. I figure that “routine information processing” probably still accounts for tens of millions of jobs. “Data scientist,” on the other other hand, requires an advanced education and probably accounts for tens of thousands of jobs at best. This trade is going to leave a whole lot of people unemployed.
More generally, though, I’m surprised at the amount of attention given to the question of whether automation is taking away jobs right now. The bulk of the evidence suggests that it’s not—or, if it is, it’s happening at a very slow rate. But this is an uninteresting question since there’s really very little controversy about it. Artificial intelligence doesn’t exist yet, so of course it’s not taking away any jobs. The question that matters is (a) whether AI will eventually exist, and (b) how many jobs will be left for humans if and when it arrives.
Brynjolfsson and McAfee, for example, say that there are three areas where “humans have a distinct advantage over machines”: creative endeavors, social interactions, and physical dexterity. True enough. But there’s no reason to think this will last long. The vast bulk of humanity isn’t very creative; most of us are surprisingly willing to put up with obviously artificial congeniality; and physical dexterity in robots is already within shouting distance of being good enough for machines to start digging post holes. If we ever create true AI—or even something close—none of these three things will give humans any advantage over digital intelligence. Most likely, homo sapiens will be obsolete within a few decades.
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Mother Jones
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From Susan Raatz, a research nutritionist at the USDA who recently conducted a test of cane sugar, honey, and high-fructose corn syrup:
The marketers “made a big mistake when they called it ‘high-fructose corn syrup,’” said Raatz.
Now, now. Let’s not blame the marketers. They had no hand in this debacle. And they did try to rename it “corn sugar” a few years ago, but the FDA turned them down.
Anyway, Raatz concluded that HFCS, honey, and cane sugar all had similar effects on the human body. This should not come as a big surprise, since all three are basically 50-50 mixes of fructose and glucose.
So why is HFCS high fructose? Because it has more fructose than ordinary corn syrup, not because it has more than most other sweeteners. But the damage has been done, and now concerned parents everywhere are making sure to feed their kids only cane sugar or honey, in the misguided belief that they’re somehow healthier and more natural.
Sorry. Sugar is sugar. Eat any kind you like. Just don’t eat too much of it.
Taken from –
Eat Any Kind of Sugar You Want, Just Don’t Eat Too Much of It
Mother Jones
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As a certified union thug (UAW local 2103, bitches!), I am honor bound not to work today. Unless, of course, someone is wrong on the internet somewhere and I have to step in. But that doesn’t mean you will be left blogless. Hilbert is not unionized—and, like the lilies of the field, he neither toils nor spins. He just smells the roses all day long. So it’s perfectly fine for him to entertain you today.
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Coffee lovers beware: Those miracle beans just got all the more precious. Coffee rust, a fungal disease, and Brazil’s epic drought are driving up the cost of that vital morning fix.
As NPR reports, wholesale coffee prices have jumped by more than 60 percent since January, from $1.25 per pound to $1.85. And traders suspect that the worst is still to come. Some predict that during the main harvest next month, prices could shoot up to $3 a pound. The long-term forecast looks even grimmer: Global warming is only making it easier for the fungus to spread, and some studies even suggest that our favorite blends will be wiped out by 2080.
Will you need a savings plan just to cover your morning cuppa joe? Well, it’s really the farmers and distributors who bear the brunt of the rust. On the consumer end, the serious snobs will feel the sting most: Even if plants survive, the fungus can hurt the coffee’s flavor, so specialty shops will need go the extra distance, and pay the extra penny, to get the best beans.
Some shops are already raising their rates. Joe, a specialty coffee chain with 10 shops in New York City and Philadelphia, recently raised it’s prices by 25 cents a drink because of the higher cost of beans.
So at what price does the coffee habit no longer become worth it? Ugh … get me another cup and I’ll stew on it.
Samantha Larson is a science nerd, adventure enthusiast, and fellow at Grist. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Food
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Do they at least believe in recycling?
Major media outlets in the U.S. are doing a piss-poor job of covering climate change. But even when they do cover it, many of their audience members don’t believe them.
On Monday, Gallup released recent survey data showing that 42 percent of Americans polled believe news outlets exaggerate the seriousness of climate change.
As you might expect, there’s a big partisan divide on the question. More than two-thirds of Republicans think the media exaggerates, while nearly half of Democrats believe the seriousness of climate change is actually underestimated by the media.
Click to embiggen.
Back in 2006, only about a third of Americans polled believed news outlets exaggerated climate change. The skepticism rose over the next four years and peaked in 2010, when 48 percent of those polled said the threat was exaggerated by the media. So at least now we’re down from the high point.
Click to embiggen.
Many Americans are also clueless about the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Just 60 percent of Americans polled realize that most scientists agree global warming is occurring, while 29 percent think most scientists are unsure. In fact, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change.
Click to embiggen.
Source
Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated, Gallup
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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Two-thirds of Republicans think the media exaggerates climate change
Factory workers in the U.K. might be put onto graveyard shifts in a bid to make the most of the country’s wind energy supplies.
The National Grid, the power transmission network in the U.K., is considering paying factories and other big customers to operate through the night and during other quiet times. That would shift some commercial electricity demand from peak times to periods when demand is normally lowest but wind continues to blow. Here’s The Telegraph with an explanation:
The Grid said this could be “cheaper than constraining the generation” through so-called ‘constraint payments’, which compensate wind farm owners for switching them off when National Grid’s electricity transmission cables are unable to cope with the level of power the turbines are producing, such as when it is unusually windy.
Wind farm operators were paid [$12.5 million] in 2012-13 in constraint payments, but that total has already risen to [$45.9 million] so far for 2013-14, as more wind farms are built.
It’s an interesting idea — as long as some of the savings are passed on to the workers to compensate them for adopting onerous nocturnal lifestyles.
Source
Factories could be paid to operate at night to cut wind farm compensation, The Telegraph
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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Wind power boom could see British factories operating at night
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