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Look at this trippy map of all your climate-related Google searches

by ShawneeT81 Posted on June 17, 2015

let them google that for you

Look at this trippy map of all your climate-related Google searches

By on 17 Jun 2015commentsShare

Did you know that the computer users of New Delhi, Mexico City, and Bangkok are more likely to ask questions about global warming (and similar terms like “climate change”) than New Yorkers are? Or that computer users in Hong Kong (who ask fewer climate change questions than New Yorkers, but more than residents of Sydney, Australia) are looking for both the up and the downsides to our coming climate apocalypse? Their top three searches: “What are we doing to stop global warming?” “What are the advantages of global warming?” and “Will the earth die because of global warming?”

Well, now you do. Thanks to a snazzy new data visualization project by the Oakland-based Pitch Interactive and Google’s News Lab, you can find out even more about the global climate anxiety cocktail patter. (Though I am going to go right ahead and warn you that the rotating Earth that is clearly meant to be the most awe-inspiring feature of the visualization is more on the side of nausea-inducing.)

The visualization also tracks several other environmentally-related questions, both by city (Mexico City: “How much trash is in the ocean each year?” New York: “How many oceans are there?”) and over time. It quickly becomes clear, for example, that despite Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy and the rise in climate change refugees, computer-related curiosity (or at least Google-using curiosity) about climate change has yet to recapture the heights that it reached in 2006, when An Inconvenient Truth came out.

I will admit to feeling a little curmudgeonly about data visualizations like this. There’s nothing here that can’t be found with some judicious use of regular old Google Trends. There you can also find that no country is more interested in climate change than Fiji. Is that because the Fiji Islands are plan B for the people of Kirabati — another chain of islands threatened by sea level rise? Is it because Google Trends is a pretty inexact way to measure interest in anything? I will leave those questions for another day, and also add that the video below is a nice summation of what the visualization is trying to do.

Source:
Google just created a stunning visualization of how the world searches for ‘global warming’

, Washington Post.

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Look at this trippy map of all your climate-related Google searches

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13 Tweets That Definitively Prove That Donald Trump Is Not a Scientist

by Myrna Posted on June 16, 2015

The reality-TV star has a long history of firing the facts. Alex Brandon/AP Donald Trump has announced that he’s running for president! And while the real estate and necktie tycoon has no chance of actually winning, a White House bid would provide him with an even larger platform to spread his unique blend of anti-science nonsense. Here are some examples: 1. Climate Change. Trump contends that global warming is a “hoax.” Here he is on Fox News last year citing extreme winter weather as evidence that climate scientists are wrong: He’s made similar comments on Twitter: The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012 This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps,and our GW scientists are stuck in ice — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2014 NBC News just called it the great freeze – coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2014 Any and all weather events are used by the GLOBAL WARMING HOAXSTERS to justify higher taxes to save our planet! They don’t believe it $$$$! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2014 2. Vaccines and autism. Trump is an advocate of the completely baseless theory that vaccines can cause autism. “I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations, and a month later the child is no longer healthy,” he said on Fox in 2012. “It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world. And all of a sudden, they go in, they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It’s like they’re pumping in—you know, it’s terrible, the amount. And they pump this into this little body. And then all of the sudden, the child is different a month later. And I strongly believe that’s it.” Trump claims to be “all for vacations” but argues that they should be given “separately and over an extended period of time, not all at one time”—an idea that medical experts reject. Back in September, Trump went on an extended Twitter rant about the issue: No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses—one vaccine at a time, over time. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014 I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014 I’m not against vaccinations for your children, I’m against them in 1 massive dose.Spread them out over a period of time & autism will drop! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014 So many people who have children with autism have thanked me—amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014 3. Ebola. Last summer, Trump protested the decision to transport American healthcare workers who had been infected with Ebola in West Africa back to the United States for treatment: Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days – now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2014 Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2014 The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2014 The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our “borders.” Act fast! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2014 As my colleague Tim McDonnell has explained, “Health care experts, meanwhile, insisted that the risk was minimal; the two patients Trump was talking about were ultimately brought back to the US and successfully treated without infecting anyone else.” What’s more, doctors even used blood donated by these survivors to help treat other Ebola patients. But Trump was soon back at it, accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of somehow covering up the dangers posed by the disease: Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting. Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2014 Originally posted here: 13 Tweets That Definitively Prove That Donald Trump Is Not a Scientist

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13 Tweets That Definitively Prove That Donald Trump Is Not a Scientist

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We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said.

by Myrna Posted on June 12, 2015

See original article –  We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said. ; ; ;

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We Asked Climate Deniers What They Think of the Pope. Here’s What They Said.

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Investigators Are Coming After Apple in an Antitrust Probe—Again

by MariamBeauregar Posted on June 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just as Apple catapulted into the music streaming industry at its annual developer conference earlier this week, state and federal investigators, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and even the European Commission were poking around to see if the multibillion-dollar tech giant had violated antitrust laws.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that attorneys general in New York and Connecticut were examining whether Apple pressured or colluded with labels to pull listeners away from free streaming services offered by companies like Spotify and YouTube in favor of its own paid product, Apple Music. Days before its unveiling, Apple had been negotiating with music labels over terms, according to Bloomberg News; the labels were fighting for a larger cut of revenue than they currently receive from Spotify. The Verge reported in May that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee if Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music corporation, blocked its music from hitting the site.

In a letter to the New York attorney general, UMG denied wrongdoing and noted it had not made agreements with Apple, Sony Music Entertainment, or Warner Music Group to “impede the availability of third-party free or ad-supported music streaming services.”

But this isn’t the first time Apple has been at the center of questionable antitrust practices. Here are a few other instances in which the tech giant has been under scrutiny:

E-books: Two years ago, in what would be a landmark case in the publishing industry, a federal judge in New York found Apple guilty of conspiring with five major publishers to fix the prices of e-books in an effort to stifle competition with Amazon. Apple is currently appealing the decision.
Employment: The dark side of Silicon Valley hiring practices emerged last April, after Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel settled a class action lawsuit with about 64,000 employees for $415 million over backdoor “no poaching” agreements to not hire each other’s employees. (The intended result was to suppress wages.) The settlement came four years after the Justice Department called on those companies to stop making those agreements in a federal antitrust complaint.
Music restrictions: In December, following a decadelong class action lawsuit, a federal jury in California ruled that Apple operated within antitrust laws when a software update prevented songs purchased outside of iTunes from playing on iPods. The Los Angeles Times reported that the decision could have cost Apple $1 billion if the company had been found guilty.

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Investigators Are Coming After Apple in an Antitrust Probe—Again

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You May Soon Be Able to Calculate How Many Calories Are in Your Food Porn

by Emilie7110 Posted on June 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Are you the kind of person who relishes publishing over-saturated photos of your dinner onto Instagram? If so, a new project, reportedly being developed by Google, may soon provide you with yet another interactive activity with your food—other than simply eating it.

The Guardian reports the prospective project, coined “Im2Calories,” aims to help users calculate the caloric makeup of food photos. Using an artificial-intelligence technology that would “analyze the depth of pixels in an image” it would then figure out “the size and shape” of our meals by subjecting that analysis to various algorithms. After all that? Voila! That caloric content of those perfectly manicured entrees.

It’s not perfect. Developers say that initially the technology may only be able to correctly measure the calories in a photo 30 percent of the time. But in a recent presentation, Google research scientist Kevin Murphy said that success rate is good enough to attract enough curious users to improve it over time.

Although a spokesperson for Google said the tool is still only in research mode, its potential creation could certainly help people keep tabs on their calorie intake. But is this really effective for losing weight? Research suggests such knowledge does little to impact a person’s food choices.

This might not matter much to Instagram’s crowded food wing, reflected in popular accounts such as You Did Not Eat That and You Wish You Ate This, which is likely to gobble up the calorie counting tool. Just look at the overnight success of Microsoft’s age guessing app. And after all, there is only so much satisfaction the number of likes a perfectly manicured food post can provide a person.

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You May Soon Be Able to Calculate How Many Calories Are in Your Food Porn

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Google’s New Diversity Stats Are Only Slightly Less Embarrassing Than They Were Last Year

by GilbertBrisbane Posted on June 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Around this time last year, Google shocked Silicon Valley by voluntarily releasing statistics on the diversity of its workforce. The move helped shame other large tech companies into doing the same, and the picture that emerged wasn’t pretty: In most cases, only 10 percent of the companies’ overall employees were black or Latino, compared to 27 percent in the US workforce as a whole. For its own part, Google admitted that “we’re miles from where we want to be,” and pledged to do more to cultivate minority and female tech talent.

Now Google has an update: Its 2015 diversity stats, released yesterday, show that it has moved inches, not miles, toward a workforce that reflects America. The representation of female techies ticked up by 1 percentage point (from 17 to 18 percent), Asians gained 1 point, and whites, though still the majority, slipped by 1 point. Otherwise, the numbers are unchanged:

Google

“With an organization our size, year-on-year growth and meaningful change is going to take time,” Nancy Lee, Google’s vice president of people operations, told the Guardian. Last year, Google spent $115 million on diversity initiatives and dispatched its own engineers to historically black colleges and universities to teach introductory computer science courses and help graduating students prepare for job searches. But unlike Intel, another big tech company that has prioritized diversity, Google has not set firm goals for diversifying its talent pool.

“While every company cannot match Intel’s ambitious plan, they can set concrete, measurable goals, targets, and timetables,” said a statement from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who last year played a key role in convincing Google and other companies to disclose their diversity stats. “If they don’t measure it, they don’t mean it.”

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Google’s New Diversity Stats Are Only Slightly Less Embarrassing Than They Were Last Year

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US beekeepers lost almost half their honeybees last year

by TrudyNorthern Posted on May 14, 2015

green4us

How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

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White Dwarf Issue 67: 09th May 2015 – White Dwarf

Conqueror protocols, engaged! White Dwarf 67 strides forth like an automata of death – well, of weekly hobby goodness – but beside it the Kastelan battle robots, the real mindless machines of death and destruction. What are these relics of an age ancient even by the standards of the Imperium? We’ve got the knowledge you’re […]

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Cesar Millan’s Short Guide to a Happy Dog – Cesar Millan

After more than 9 seasons as TV’s Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan has a new mission: to use his unique insights about dog psychology to create stronger, happier relationships between humans and their canine companions. Now in paperback, this inspirational and practical guide draws on thousands of training encounters around the world to present 98 essential lessons. Taken together, they will […]

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Codex: Imperial Knights (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

Thundering across the battlefield, the towering walkers known as Imperial Knights scatter the foes of the Imperium with booming battle cannon shots and roaring swings of their massive chainblades. The Knights are piloted by proud and deadly warriors of ancient cultures, each one part of a noble family whose lineage can stretch back to before […]

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Linking Our Lineage: 12 Techniques from 12 Master Smiths – Victoria Lansford

Linking Our Lineage is a book of jewelry and metalsmithing techniques with chapters by Nanz Aalund, Lessley Burke, Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez, Andy Cooperman, Ronda Coryell, Robin Gordon, Mary Lee Hu, Linda Kaye-Moses, Brian Meek, Dawn M. Miller, Chris Ploof, and Jayne Redman, and edited by Victoria Lansford. The processes illustrated range from beginning to advanced […]

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Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul – Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Marty Becker

For thousands of years, dogs have been cherished as devoted companions and exuberant playmates—their unconditional love, limitless affection, and unwavering loyalty never fail to melt our hearts. The stories in Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul truly capture the special joy these four-legged creatures bring to our lives and hearts.  The family that learns […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread

PLEASE NOTE: This is a  summary and analysis  of the book and NOT the original book.  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis   Inside this Instaread: Summary of entire book, Introduction to the important people in the book, Key Takeaways and Analysis of the Key Takeaways. […]

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White Dwarf Issue 66: 02nd May 2015 – White Dwarf

Feel the earth tremble as White Dwarf 66 stamps down and with it the Imperial Knight Warden! Making not one, not two, but five classes of Imperial Knight – the Warden, Crusader and Gallant, plus the Paladin and Errant with a host of new options – you’re going to want to pick up White Dwarf […]

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From – 

US beekeepers lost almost half their honeybees last year

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How Californians Screwed Drought-Plagued California

by OliverSheets Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Solving California’s water crisis got a lot harder on Monday when a state appeals court struck down steeply tiered water rates in the city of San Juan Capistrano. Like many other California cities, this affluent Orange County town encourages conservation by charging customers who use small amounts of water a lower rate per gallon than customers who use larger amounts. The court ruled that the practice conflicts with Proposition 218, a ballot measure that, among other things, bars governments from charging more for a service than it costs to provide it.

The drought isn’t the only way Prop. 218 is hamstringing California cities. Early last year, San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency announced a controversial pilot program that would allow Google buses and other tech shuttles to use public bus stops for $1 a stop. Activists, who saw the shuttles as symbols of inequality and out-of-control gentrification, wanted the agency to charge Google much more than that and use the profits to subsidize the city’s chronically underfunded public transit system. But MTA officials argued that their hands were tied: Prop. 218 prevented them from charging more than the estimated $1.5 million cost of administering the program.

Prop. 218, the “Right to Vote on Taxes Act,” was a constitutional amendment drafted in 1996 by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the group that led the tax revolt that swept California in the 1970s and eventually helped elect President Ronald Reagan. After 1978, when the group’s signature initiative, Prop. 13, began severely limiting property tax increases, cities and counties moved to plug their budgetary holes with other types of taxes and fees. Prop 218 was designed to constrain those workarounds by requiring that any new tax be approved by voters or affected property owners. For the purposes of the act, taxes included any fees from which a government derived a profit.

Prop. 218 has been widely criticized for making it harder for cities to raise revenues, but the recent cases with water rates and tech shuttles point to another issue: the way the initiative prevents state and local governments from addressing urgent social and environmental problems. It’s worth remembering that withdrawing water from California’s dwindling reservoirs to feed verdant lawns is in itself a tax of sorts, and Mother Nature may not wait until the next election to revoke our ability to levy it.

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How Californians Screwed Drought-Plagued California

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For Wyoming, Climate Change Is Now

by Myrna Posted on April 16, 2015

Science doesn’t care about Wyoming’s laws. In 2014, I wrote about the Wyoming state Legislature actively moving to suppress real science education when it came to global warming. As I said, Science itself has many laws, but it doesn’t give a damn about ours. Those words still echo loudly when it comes to Wyoming. A new research paper has come out showing that snow melt in the northwest region of that state is occurring earlier all the time, exactly as you’d expect with warmer winters and spring. The scientists used satellite data to measure snow extent over time and found that snow is melting 16 ± 10 days earlier in the 2000s compared with 1972–1999. Percent snow cover for a given day for the area in Wyoming studied. Note that in more recent years, snow melted earlier. NASA Earth Observatory Read the rest at Slate. View post:  For Wyoming, Climate Change Is Now ; ; ;

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For Wyoming, Climate Change Is Now

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

by 0c4g78x Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here is a hilarious thing that I find hilarious. The first McDonald’s franchise opened its doors 60 years ago today in Des Plaines, Illinois. This is the day McDonald’s Corporation celebrates as its birthday. When you dive into Google to find the opening day menu for the McDonald’s that opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, this is what you find:

source: kottke.com

Notice anything funny? On its opening day menu, McDonald’s bragged about having already served “over 15 million burgers.” So what’s going on? Is this just a hilariously transparent case of false advertising or something else?

It turns out something else. Though McDonald’s as we know it traces its origins to April 15, 1955, in Des Plaines, Illinois, that was actually just the first franchise. McDonald’s had actually already existed for years in California. It was founded by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in the 1940s. The site’s official history explains:

Entrepreneur Ray Kroc pitched his vision of creating McDonald’s restaurants all over the U.S. to the brothers. In 1955, he founded McDonald’s System, Inc., a predecessor of the McDonald’s Corporation, and six years later bought the exclusive rights to the McDonald’s name. By 1958, McDonald’s had sold its 100 millionth hamburger.

So there was nothing nefarious about this claim, but it is still pretty amusing.

Correction: This post originally said Des Plaines was in Iowa. It is in Illinois. I’m dumb.

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McDonald’s Is 60 Years Old. On Its "Opening Day" It Bragged About Having Served 15 Million Burgers.

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