Interesting Links...
Oct. 11th, 2019 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Jane Fonda at the age of 81 got arrested for protesting regarding climate change -- she's moved to DC to help with the protests
Jane Fonda was arrested outside the United States Capitol on Friday as part of a climate change protest, a high-profile act of civil disobedience by the Oscar-winning actress and Vietnam War objector, who said that she planned to reprise her role every Friday for the rest of the year.
Ms. Fonda, 81, was among 16 people charged with unlawfully demonstrating on the East Front of the Capitol, a misdemeanor under a Washington law prohibiting protesters from obstructing public building entrances, Capitol Police said.
She had just finished speaking as part of a Fire Drill Fridays protest, the first of a weekly series of planned climate change demonstrations, when she was taken into custody at 11:50 a.m. local time. Ms. Fonda was later released on her own recognizance.
With the Capitol Dome as a backdrop, Ms. Fonda said she wanted to show solidarity with young climate change strikers such as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in an emissions-free yacht to draw attention to global warming. She said she had became inspired after reading the best-selling book “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal” by Naomi Klein about climate change over the Labor Day weekend.
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
She had been active in the Black Panthers and started a vaudeville troupe with the fellow actor Donald Sutherland as an alternative to the U.S.O.-sponsored shows of Bob Hope for entertaining soldiers.
Ms. Fonda’s 1972 visit to North Vietnam, where she had urged American pilots to stop the bombings during the war, earned her the pejorative nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
Ms. Fonda, who used a microphone on Friday to address the demonstrators, said the group was trying to persuade lawmakers to support the Green New Deal, the environmental initiative proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, that calls for a net-zero carbon United States economy by 2050.
The demonstrators also wanted to press Congress to put an end to fossil fuel exploration and to “phase out” fossil fuel infrastructure, said Ms. Fonda, who added that it was feasible to find fossil fuel industry workers comparable paying jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Why they arrested her, I've no clue. The article isn't clear.
2. Why Don't More Men Take Their Wives Last Names
Hmmm. Well I have a rule, if I got married -- I pick my own last name unless I like yours better. That's what my mother did -- for her, it wasn't a contest. My father had a better last name. But then my family is not exactly traditional. My last name actually originated as the maternal last name. We traced it all the way back to 1600 Wales, and the woman had a kid, and for some reason or other chose not to give her son either his father's last name or her husband's last name, he got her last name.
So my last name was passed down from mother to son.
In short, if I married some guy with the last of Laposkey or Debowshitz or Johnson or Jones or Smith or Cruise or Showalter. I'd keep my last name. He's out of luck. Sorry.
My sister-in-law had the same opinion. She kept her's. But she gave her daughter her father's name -- mainly because she was annoyed with her family.
We're stubborn in my family. Convention be dammed. Also we don't give a shit what other people think. What can I say? Not a lemming in the bunch.
3. The Very Modern Life of An Old Timey Baseball Organist
It’s September 8, 2017, at 7:10 p.m., and the Boston Red Sox are taking the field against the Tampa Bay Rays. The atmosphere is relaxed. It’s a home game, and the Sox are leading the American League East, coming into this series off a two-game win streak. But nothing is over until it’s over, and it’s only the top of the first.
Four levels above the on-field action, Josh Kantor, the park’s organist, has his own challenge to deal with. He’s trying to learn the theme song from Game of Thrones. “Somebody wanted to hear it,” he explains, his fingers working. “It’ll be a little bit of an adventure in about 40 seconds.”
The 40 seconds pass. “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” the DJ’s latest pick, fades out. Kantor’s organ cranks up, and Fenway Park transforms, briefly, into a land of war and dragons.
By the song’s end, there are two outs on the board. “That was pretty good!” I say. Kantor nods: “Passable.” In the stands, someone, somewhere, is smiling at his phone.
Everyone knows what a baseball game is like. There are the sights: bright green grass, black ump shirts, bases that look tiny from the cheap seats. There are the tastes and smells—hot dogs, popcorn, sweat—and that pleasantly crushed feeling that comes with being taken out with the crowd. And there are the sounds: the crack of the bat, the rolling applause, and the wheezy, cheerful organ, which soars over everything like a solid double.
At first glance, it may seem like hardly anything about the experience of a professional baseball game changed in the last century. But a trip to any modern ballpark offers a number of examples of how America’s pastime has evolved to face the future, whether it’s with big data or live fish. Thanks to musicians such as Josh Kantor, who use technology to find new possibilities in old-school entertainment, the organ is catching up, too.
4. Good News These Exo Planets Probably Have Water Bad News Ahhhh So Much Water?
So, I'm guessing they are covered with nothing but water, which means not exactly inhabitable?
In 2017, the world got a look at an incredible star system, TRAPPIST-1, which had seven intriguing planets orbiting it. In those initial glances researchers figured out that—optimistically—five could potentially have temperatures that allowed for liquid water on their surfaces, with three of the seven planets located in orbits within the star's habitable zone.
This was particularly exciting because where there's water, there might be life. Here on Earth, life thrives when we just add water. But a closer inspection of those wet worlds, published in Nature Astronomy says they might be so bloated with water as to snuff out any potential for life. And even if some organisms did manage to develop, the study suggests, the massive quantities of water might keep us from detecting them.
But after years of looking for signs of water on other worlds, how could there possibly be a place where there’s too much water for life? Let’s take a look.
We’re Talking Really, REALLY Wet
Earth seems like a pretty wet place. We drink our recommended eight cups of water a day, and our bodies are about 60 percent water by volume. Heck, water covers about 71 percent of this planet’s surface. That’s a pretty wet world, right?
Not compared to most of the planets at TRAPPIST-1. Though it might seem like Earth is awash in water, dihydrogen monoxide makes up just 0.02 percent of our planet's mass. 0.02 percent. The rest of it is rocks and metals and organic matter and everything else on this world. In contrast, some of the planets around TRAPPIST-1 could have water that accounts for 15 percent of their mass. Or even more.
Yep. Too much water. Oh well. That does not necessarily mean nothing is alive on them though...And what's really interesting? The construction of the planet defies what they know to date about planetary construction or how worlds are formed. It also defies their understanding of the relationship between rock and water and they interact.
If you are a space or science nerd this is worth a read. From Popular Science.
5. I've been here 50 Years -- The EU Citizens Struggling for the Right to Stay in Britain
This is just painful and blood-pressure inducing. So I thought I'd share. Why should I be alone, after all? Also it's painfully reassuring in a way to realize that the UK is just as nasty as the US at the moment. Albeit not surprising if you think about it. Note, I couldn't make it through the article and only reproduced the portion I did make it through.
"In early May, Doris Ratnam sat at her kitchen table, trying to scan her German passport with her mobile phone. She was applying for “settled status” in the UK, the new immigration status most of the 3.4 million or so EU nationals living in Britain need to acquire if they want to stay in the country legally after Brexit. Ratnam, who is 72 and has lived in London since arriving as an au pair in 1968, was annoyed that she felt obliged to apply under the scheme to remain more securely in a country she considers her home.
She was flustered by the process of attempting to get her phone to suck all her personal details out of her passport. Something was not working, and we sat for 20 minutes in near silence as she moved the phone slowly over the cover of the passport, as shown in a reassuring Home Office Youtube video, trying to get it to read the chip hidden inside the document. “Move the phone to read the chip,” Ratnam muttered, studying the guidance notes. “What am I supposed to do? Move the phone to find the chip. I feel stressed … it’s the technology.”
After repeated failed attempts, the app informed her she had been locked out of the system for 24 hours. It would take two-and-a-half months, two visits to the local town hall (an hour on two buses each way), a £15 appointment fee and numerous calls to a Home Office helpline before her status was approved. The process was dispiriting. “I shouldn’t be made to feel like a foreigner again after such a long time here,” she said.
Before the end of June 2021, if Britain leaves the EU with a deal, or by 31 December 2020 with no deal, most EU nationals resident in the UK must have applied for settled status if they want to continue living and working here. The EU settled status scheme is designed to fulfil the government’s promise that all EU citizens, their family members, and dependants living here before Brexit, will be entitled to remain, with no diminishment of their rights. Anyone who has lived here continuously for five years should, in theory, be able to get settled status easily; people who have been here for less than five years will be granted “pre-settled” status, requiring them to reapply for permanent status once they have racked up enough years of continuous residence (which means not leaving the country for more than six months a year).
For Europeans in the UK, the Home Office’s “EU Exit: ID Document Check” app is the gateway between belonging and exclusion. How well this piece of software works will be a crucial factor in the government’s attempts to present Brexit as a success. In the past year, almost 1.5 million Europeans living in the UK have grappled with the Home Office application process and managed to secure settled or pre-settled status. The Home Office would like us to celebrate this as a bureaucratic success story, and in a very optimistic frame of mind, perhaps we might."
6. Books are Good for Your Brain, These Techniques Will Help You Read More
Good to know, and somewhat validating since 75% of my time is spent reading and writing. That said, I don't really need any help with this, I read constantly..on the subway, waiting for the subway, on the train, before bed, during lunch...I'm a read-a-holic -- but in case anyone else needs help with it (doubtful most of my flist are read-a-holics too, and some of you read even more books than I do)..
How to Fit in More Reading
You've got a busy schedule—sometimes you just can't find the time to read. That's why you need to start small. When setting a new goal, you should aim for a concrete task that you can build on later. So start your habit by reading, say, five pages of a book that interests you every day. Once you’re hitting five pages a day, try ten, then twenty, and keep pushing your goal horizon upward.
Focusing on your own interests is key. Don't jump right into The Brothers Karamazov just because it's Serious Literature—you can still get those aforementioned brain benefits from your favorite science fiction. Reading a book of your choice makes the activity a pleasure rather than a chore, so you're more likely to do it. (And if you do have a yen for Dostoevsky, you can tackle that tome once you've made a regular habit of chewing through pages.)
As you start creating this routine, be kind. Self-criticism, aka “self-bullying,” has been shown to keep you from achieving your goals. So cut yourself some slack, especially if you’re starting from zero. Even if you miss a day, recognize that we all sometimes stay out late, get wrapped up in a TV show, or just forget. Be willing to pick yourself back up and honor the long-term commitment the next day.
To fit in those five pages, it also helps to keep a book, audiobook app, or e-reader on you as you go about the day. Then, when you have some down time—you’re waiting for a friend, dozing through your commute, or doing a task that doesn’t require your full attention—you can open your text instead of pulling up your favorite smartphone game.
This brings us to the great debate: pages versus screens versus audio. While paper is still the clear winner in the court of public opinion, science hasn’t proven that physical books are inherently better than digital ones.
The academic research has mostly focused on retention, that is, how much of a book’s events you remember after you read it. Although paper books may have a leg up on that score, their advantage appears to depend on environment and context. The aforementioned pro-paper study took place in a laboratory setting: Students all read the same text, but some looked at the words on paper and others viewed an on-screen PDF. A different study looked at kids in the classroom, reading from either a book or an iPad, and found no meaningful difference between the two media.
Carrying an e-reader with you certainly makes it easy to churn through pages at any time. But which one should you choose? You could see who offers e-ink screens, look for the lowest price, or obsess over specs. But the main point to consider is the books you like to read. While you’ll find most large publishers on all the major e-reader platforms, Amazon's Kindle is by far the most popular storefront for self-published books and niche tastes. If there’s an author or genre you’re particularly interested in, do some research and see which stores they sell through—Amazon, Rakuten's Kobo, or Barnes and Noble's Nook—before you buy. And remember, you can always try out the apps before you invest in the device.
As for audiobooks, the research so far has found that they stimulate the brain just as deeply as black-and-white pages, although they affect your gray matter somewhat differently. Because you’re listening to a story, you’re using different methods to decode and comprehend it. With print books, you need to provide the voice, called the prosody—you’re imagining the “tune and rhythm of speech,” the intonation, the stress on certain syllables, and so. With audio, the voice actor provides that information for you, so your brain isn’t generating the prosody itself, but rather working to understand the prosody in your ears.
Prosody aside, audiobooks still impact your thoughts and feelings. In other words, yes, listening to them “counts” as reading. This is good news, because they make it easy to squeeze more book time into your schedule. You can plug in some headphones and listen to an audiobook even when you need to keep your eyes peeled—like when you ride, walk, or drive to work. In fact, on the highway, an audiobook may help you pay attention: The slight distraction lets your brain keep a handle on repetitive or monotonous tasks like long drives on the highway.
If you don't want to spend too much money, you can also enjoy digital books without paying a cent. Libraries have been embracing technology by leaps and bounds, with two apps in particular: Overdrive and its sister Libby. Simply download the app, find your library, and enter your library card number. After this setup, you can borrow free ebooks and audiobooks, then read or listen to them through the app or on a compatible device. And if you already have an Amazon Prime account, you can save a little money by browsing its various lending libraries and enjoying the free book you get once a month.
Ultimately, if you hope to get a reading habit going, you shouldn’t dismiss paper, digital, or audio. Go with what makes the most sense for your needs, choosing a combination of the three depending on the occasion.
7. Origins of 25 Monsters, Ghosts, and Other Spooky Things
The most unnerving is the poltergeist, a ghost that haunts a person other than a place. It originates from Scottish folklore.
8. The Witness
This is the story of a woman who witnessed the executions of over 278 death row inmates as part of her job. It was her job to witness them. (And you thought your job was bad...also just in case, you still need help being convinced that the death penalty is a very very bad idea.)
"For more than a decade, it was Michelle Lyons’s job to observe the final moments of death row inmates—but watching 278 executions did not come without a cost.
Texas Monthly |by Pamela Colloff "
Part I.
Ms. Lyons,
Hi, if you are reading this then they killed me. I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed talking to you, you seem like a really great lady. I’m sorry we didn’t meet under different circumstances. . . . Thank you for your kindness. Have a wonderful day.
—Letter from death row inmate Robert Coulson, June 25, 2002
Early one morning in April, Michelle Lyons pulled up outside her daughter’s elementary school in Huntsville, seventy miles north of Houston. Set deep in the Piney Woods, Huntsville—which is home to no fewer than five prisons—is a company town whose primary industry is confinement. Many parents who were dropping their children off at school that day worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville’s largest employer. Michelle, who sat behind the wheel of her blue Chevy sedan nursing a travel mug of coffee, had worked for TDCJ herself for more than a decade. She had been the public face of the agency, a disarmingly friendly, upbeat spokesperson for the biggest prison system in the nation. Though she had left the position two years earlier, she was still well-known around town, and several mothers waved as her car idled in the drop-off line. “Have a beautiful day,” she murmured when her nine-year-old leaned in to kiss her goodbye.
When Michelle first went to work for TDCJ, in 2001, she had begun each weekday morning by driving into town, past the picturesque courthouse square and toward the Walls Unit, the 165-year-old penitentiary that is Huntsville’s most iconic landmark. The prison, whose ramparts measure more than thirty feet high, is a colossal, foreboding structure crowned by razor wire—a two-block-long, red-brick fortress that houses the most active death chamber in the country. Michelle’s office occupied a corner of an administrative building directly across the street from the Walls, and one of the requirements of her job as a public information officer had been to attend every execution the state carried out. She had also attended executions for her previous job, as a reporter covering prisons for the hometown newspaper, the Huntsville Item. Michelle spent many evenings—hundreds, in fact—standing shoulder-to-shoulder with witnesses in a cramped room that afforded a view of the death chamber, where she watched as men, and two women, were injected with a three-drug cocktail that stopped their hearts. All told, she had seen 278 inmates put to death.
As Michelle pulled away from the school, she headed out of Huntsville, toward Interstate 45 and her new job more than an hour’s drive away, in downtown Houston. She cracked her window, grateful for the cool air on her face. Mornings, when her commute offered time to think back on everything she had seen at the Walls, were the hardest. She was flooded with memories from her time inside the Death House: of the conversations she had shared with particular inmates in the hours before they were strapped to the gurney; of the mothers, dressed in their Sunday best, who had turned out to attend their sons’ executions; of the victims’ families, their faces hardened with grief; of the sudden stillness that came over the prisoners soon after the lethal drugs entered their bloodstreams. She could still see some of these men—their chests expanding, their chins stiffening as they took their last breaths.
These memories intruded with such frequency that Michelle no longer tried to push them out of her mind. Instead, she had started recording voice memos, letting her thoughts unspool as she drove alone in the car. She kept one eye on the road that morning as she rummaged through her purse for her iPhone, finally fishing it out and holding the microphone up to her mouth. “I support the death penalty,” she began. “I believe that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only way you can truly pay your debt to society is with your life.” She spoke with the same deliberation she had used when addressing reporters outside the Walls after high-profile executions. “But in other cases, I feel very conflicted,” she added. “There are men I watched die that I don’t think should have.” A piece of folk art she had picked up on a trip to Austin—an evil-eye charm to ward off bad spirits—bobbed from her rearview mirror. “I thought being away from the prison system would make me think about it less, but it’s been quite the opposite,” she continued. “I think about it all the time.”
As she approached Houston’s outer suburbs, the East Texas pines receded, replaced by roadside billboards hawking vasectomy reversals and personal injury lawyers and Chick-fil-A. Michelle thought back to a few months earlier, when she had called her former boss, Larry Fitzgerald, on the way to work, as she did every now and then to check in on him. The authoritative sound of his voice—Larry had been a radio news reporter back in the sixties—had always reassured her. It was Larry who had recruited her to TDCJ, and their friendship had continued after he retired and Michelle succeeded him as the agency’s director of public information. Though Larry was 38 years her senior, they had remained close because of the peculiar history they shared. Wardens, guards, and prison administrators had come and gone, but she and Larry had each been a constant presence, attending virtually every execution during the period when George W. Bush’s bid for the presidency had thrust Texas into the international spotlight.
Despite all the time the two had spent together—the workday lunches, the happy hours, the long evenings waiting to hear if the appellate courts would grant a reprieve—Michelle had never asked Larry how he felt about watching inmates die, and he had never offered his opinion. So when she had phoned him from the road the previous fall and he had casually mentioned that he was having nightmares—which he downplayed by calling them dreams—about his time inside the Walls, his words had sent a jolt through her. She could still picture the exact moment he made this admission: she had been making a turn onto the Hardy Toll Road, and the morning sun had been unbearably bright. That Larry too was struggling had unnerved her. He had always been the less serious one, the one who could shrug off the solemnity of the moment with a dry aside. Often after they exited the Death House, he would suggest they go drink margaritas.
Michelle had forgotten where she had left off with her dictation. She was thinking about Larry, wondering which executions he relived in his dreams. Her own hard moments came when she was awake. She could still picture Ricky McGinn’s mother, an elderly woman who had arrived at her son’s execution in a floral dress and pearls. Michelle would never forget watching her try to rise from her wheelchair so she could see through the large pane of glass that separated her from the death chamber. On the other side lay her son, who had been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. McGinn was flat on his back, each limb restrained with leather straps, an IV line stuck in each arm. The old woman, her wrinkled hands pressed to the glass, had watched intently as her son’s body went slack. Michelle thought about her as she drove to work that morning. When the Houston skyline rose up in front of her, she realized her face was wet with tears.
Jane Fonda was arrested outside the United States Capitol on Friday as part of a climate change protest, a high-profile act of civil disobedience by the Oscar-winning actress and Vietnam War objector, who said that she planned to reprise her role every Friday for the rest of the year.
Ms. Fonda, 81, was among 16 people charged with unlawfully demonstrating on the East Front of the Capitol, a misdemeanor under a Washington law prohibiting protesters from obstructing public building entrances, Capitol Police said.
She had just finished speaking as part of a Fire Drill Fridays protest, the first of a weekly series of planned climate change demonstrations, when she was taken into custody at 11:50 a.m. local time. Ms. Fonda was later released on her own recognizance.
With the Capitol Dome as a backdrop, Ms. Fonda said she wanted to show solidarity with young climate change strikers such as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in an emissions-free yacht to draw attention to global warming. She said she had became inspired after reading the best-selling book “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal” by Naomi Klein about climate change over the Labor Day weekend.
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
She had been active in the Black Panthers and started a vaudeville troupe with the fellow actor Donald Sutherland as an alternative to the U.S.O.-sponsored shows of Bob Hope for entertaining soldiers.
Ms. Fonda’s 1972 visit to North Vietnam, where she had urged American pilots to stop the bombings during the war, earned her the pejorative nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
Ms. Fonda, who used a microphone on Friday to address the demonstrators, said the group was trying to persuade lawmakers to support the Green New Deal, the environmental initiative proposed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, that calls for a net-zero carbon United States economy by 2050.
The demonstrators also wanted to press Congress to put an end to fossil fuel exploration and to “phase out” fossil fuel infrastructure, said Ms. Fonda, who added that it was feasible to find fossil fuel industry workers comparable paying jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Why they arrested her, I've no clue. The article isn't clear.
2. Why Don't More Men Take Their Wives Last Names
Hmmm. Well I have a rule, if I got married -- I pick my own last name unless I like yours better. That's what my mother did -- for her, it wasn't a contest. My father had a better last name. But then my family is not exactly traditional. My last name actually originated as the maternal last name. We traced it all the way back to 1600 Wales, and the woman had a kid, and for some reason or other chose not to give her son either his father's last name or her husband's last name, he got her last name.
So my last name was passed down from mother to son.
In short, if I married some guy with the last of Laposkey or Debowshitz or Johnson or Jones or Smith or Cruise or Showalter. I'd keep my last name. He's out of luck. Sorry.
My sister-in-law had the same opinion. She kept her's. But she gave her daughter her father's name -- mainly because she was annoyed with her family.
We're stubborn in my family. Convention be dammed. Also we don't give a shit what other people think. What can I say? Not a lemming in the bunch.
3. The Very Modern Life of An Old Timey Baseball Organist
It’s September 8, 2017, at 7:10 p.m., and the Boston Red Sox are taking the field against the Tampa Bay Rays. The atmosphere is relaxed. It’s a home game, and the Sox are leading the American League East, coming into this series off a two-game win streak. But nothing is over until it’s over, and it’s only the top of the first.
Four levels above the on-field action, Josh Kantor, the park’s organist, has his own challenge to deal with. He’s trying to learn the theme song from Game of Thrones. “Somebody wanted to hear it,” he explains, his fingers working. “It’ll be a little bit of an adventure in about 40 seconds.”
The 40 seconds pass. “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” the DJ’s latest pick, fades out. Kantor’s organ cranks up, and Fenway Park transforms, briefly, into a land of war and dragons.
By the song’s end, there are two outs on the board. “That was pretty good!” I say. Kantor nods: “Passable.” In the stands, someone, somewhere, is smiling at his phone.
Everyone knows what a baseball game is like. There are the sights: bright green grass, black ump shirts, bases that look tiny from the cheap seats. There are the tastes and smells—hot dogs, popcorn, sweat—and that pleasantly crushed feeling that comes with being taken out with the crowd. And there are the sounds: the crack of the bat, the rolling applause, and the wheezy, cheerful organ, which soars over everything like a solid double.
At first glance, it may seem like hardly anything about the experience of a professional baseball game changed in the last century. But a trip to any modern ballpark offers a number of examples of how America’s pastime has evolved to face the future, whether it’s with big data or live fish. Thanks to musicians such as Josh Kantor, who use technology to find new possibilities in old-school entertainment, the organ is catching up, too.
4. Good News These Exo Planets Probably Have Water Bad News Ahhhh So Much Water?
So, I'm guessing they are covered with nothing but water, which means not exactly inhabitable?
In 2017, the world got a look at an incredible star system, TRAPPIST-1, which had seven intriguing planets orbiting it. In those initial glances researchers figured out that—optimistically—five could potentially have temperatures that allowed for liquid water on their surfaces, with three of the seven planets located in orbits within the star's habitable zone.
This was particularly exciting because where there's water, there might be life. Here on Earth, life thrives when we just add water. But a closer inspection of those wet worlds, published in Nature Astronomy says they might be so bloated with water as to snuff out any potential for life. And even if some organisms did manage to develop, the study suggests, the massive quantities of water might keep us from detecting them.
But after years of looking for signs of water on other worlds, how could there possibly be a place where there’s too much water for life? Let’s take a look.
We’re Talking Really, REALLY Wet
Earth seems like a pretty wet place. We drink our recommended eight cups of water a day, and our bodies are about 60 percent water by volume. Heck, water covers about 71 percent of this planet’s surface. That’s a pretty wet world, right?
Not compared to most of the planets at TRAPPIST-1. Though it might seem like Earth is awash in water, dihydrogen monoxide makes up just 0.02 percent of our planet's mass. 0.02 percent. The rest of it is rocks and metals and organic matter and everything else on this world. In contrast, some of the planets around TRAPPIST-1 could have water that accounts for 15 percent of their mass. Or even more.
Yep. Too much water. Oh well. That does not necessarily mean nothing is alive on them though...And what's really interesting? The construction of the planet defies what they know to date about planetary construction or how worlds are formed. It also defies their understanding of the relationship between rock and water and they interact.
If you are a space or science nerd this is worth a read. From Popular Science.
5. I've been here 50 Years -- The EU Citizens Struggling for the Right to Stay in Britain
This is just painful and blood-pressure inducing. So I thought I'd share. Why should I be alone, after all? Also it's painfully reassuring in a way to realize that the UK is just as nasty as the US at the moment. Albeit not surprising if you think about it. Note, I couldn't make it through the article and only reproduced the portion I did make it through.
"In early May, Doris Ratnam sat at her kitchen table, trying to scan her German passport with her mobile phone. She was applying for “settled status” in the UK, the new immigration status most of the 3.4 million or so EU nationals living in Britain need to acquire if they want to stay in the country legally after Brexit. Ratnam, who is 72 and has lived in London since arriving as an au pair in 1968, was annoyed that she felt obliged to apply under the scheme to remain more securely in a country she considers her home.
She was flustered by the process of attempting to get her phone to suck all her personal details out of her passport. Something was not working, and we sat for 20 minutes in near silence as she moved the phone slowly over the cover of the passport, as shown in a reassuring Home Office Youtube video, trying to get it to read the chip hidden inside the document. “Move the phone to read the chip,” Ratnam muttered, studying the guidance notes. “What am I supposed to do? Move the phone to find the chip. I feel stressed … it’s the technology.”
After repeated failed attempts, the app informed her she had been locked out of the system for 24 hours. It would take two-and-a-half months, two visits to the local town hall (an hour on two buses each way), a £15 appointment fee and numerous calls to a Home Office helpline before her status was approved. The process was dispiriting. “I shouldn’t be made to feel like a foreigner again after such a long time here,” she said.
Before the end of June 2021, if Britain leaves the EU with a deal, or by 31 December 2020 with no deal, most EU nationals resident in the UK must have applied for settled status if they want to continue living and working here. The EU settled status scheme is designed to fulfil the government’s promise that all EU citizens, their family members, and dependants living here before Brexit, will be entitled to remain, with no diminishment of their rights. Anyone who has lived here continuously for five years should, in theory, be able to get settled status easily; people who have been here for less than five years will be granted “pre-settled” status, requiring them to reapply for permanent status once they have racked up enough years of continuous residence (which means not leaving the country for more than six months a year).
For Europeans in the UK, the Home Office’s “EU Exit: ID Document Check” app is the gateway between belonging and exclusion. How well this piece of software works will be a crucial factor in the government’s attempts to present Brexit as a success. In the past year, almost 1.5 million Europeans living in the UK have grappled with the Home Office application process and managed to secure settled or pre-settled status. The Home Office would like us to celebrate this as a bureaucratic success story, and in a very optimistic frame of mind, perhaps we might."
6. Books are Good for Your Brain, These Techniques Will Help You Read More
Good to know, and somewhat validating since 75% of my time is spent reading and writing. That said, I don't really need any help with this, I read constantly..on the subway, waiting for the subway, on the train, before bed, during lunch...I'm a read-a-holic -- but in case anyone else needs help with it (doubtful most of my flist are read-a-holics too, and some of you read even more books than I do)..
How to Fit in More Reading
You've got a busy schedule—sometimes you just can't find the time to read. That's why you need to start small. When setting a new goal, you should aim for a concrete task that you can build on later. So start your habit by reading, say, five pages of a book that interests you every day. Once you’re hitting five pages a day, try ten, then twenty, and keep pushing your goal horizon upward.
Focusing on your own interests is key. Don't jump right into The Brothers Karamazov just because it's Serious Literature—you can still get those aforementioned brain benefits from your favorite science fiction. Reading a book of your choice makes the activity a pleasure rather than a chore, so you're more likely to do it. (And if you do have a yen for Dostoevsky, you can tackle that tome once you've made a regular habit of chewing through pages.)
As you start creating this routine, be kind. Self-criticism, aka “self-bullying,” has been shown to keep you from achieving your goals. So cut yourself some slack, especially if you’re starting from zero. Even if you miss a day, recognize that we all sometimes stay out late, get wrapped up in a TV show, or just forget. Be willing to pick yourself back up and honor the long-term commitment the next day.
To fit in those five pages, it also helps to keep a book, audiobook app, or e-reader on you as you go about the day. Then, when you have some down time—you’re waiting for a friend, dozing through your commute, or doing a task that doesn’t require your full attention—you can open your text instead of pulling up your favorite smartphone game.
This brings us to the great debate: pages versus screens versus audio. While paper is still the clear winner in the court of public opinion, science hasn’t proven that physical books are inherently better than digital ones.
The academic research has mostly focused on retention, that is, how much of a book’s events you remember after you read it. Although paper books may have a leg up on that score, their advantage appears to depend on environment and context. The aforementioned pro-paper study took place in a laboratory setting: Students all read the same text, but some looked at the words on paper and others viewed an on-screen PDF. A different study looked at kids in the classroom, reading from either a book or an iPad, and found no meaningful difference between the two media.
Carrying an e-reader with you certainly makes it easy to churn through pages at any time. But which one should you choose? You could see who offers e-ink screens, look for the lowest price, or obsess over specs. But the main point to consider is the books you like to read. While you’ll find most large publishers on all the major e-reader platforms, Amazon's Kindle is by far the most popular storefront for self-published books and niche tastes. If there’s an author or genre you’re particularly interested in, do some research and see which stores they sell through—Amazon, Rakuten's Kobo, or Barnes and Noble's Nook—before you buy. And remember, you can always try out the apps before you invest in the device.
As for audiobooks, the research so far has found that they stimulate the brain just as deeply as black-and-white pages, although they affect your gray matter somewhat differently. Because you’re listening to a story, you’re using different methods to decode and comprehend it. With print books, you need to provide the voice, called the prosody—you’re imagining the “tune and rhythm of speech,” the intonation, the stress on certain syllables, and so. With audio, the voice actor provides that information for you, so your brain isn’t generating the prosody itself, but rather working to understand the prosody in your ears.
Prosody aside, audiobooks still impact your thoughts and feelings. In other words, yes, listening to them “counts” as reading. This is good news, because they make it easy to squeeze more book time into your schedule. You can plug in some headphones and listen to an audiobook even when you need to keep your eyes peeled—like when you ride, walk, or drive to work. In fact, on the highway, an audiobook may help you pay attention: The slight distraction lets your brain keep a handle on repetitive or monotonous tasks like long drives on the highway.
If you don't want to spend too much money, you can also enjoy digital books without paying a cent. Libraries have been embracing technology by leaps and bounds, with two apps in particular: Overdrive and its sister Libby. Simply download the app, find your library, and enter your library card number. After this setup, you can borrow free ebooks and audiobooks, then read or listen to them through the app or on a compatible device. And if you already have an Amazon Prime account, you can save a little money by browsing its various lending libraries and enjoying the free book you get once a month.
Ultimately, if you hope to get a reading habit going, you shouldn’t dismiss paper, digital, or audio. Go with what makes the most sense for your needs, choosing a combination of the three depending on the occasion.
7. Origins of 25 Monsters, Ghosts, and Other Spooky Things
The most unnerving is the poltergeist, a ghost that haunts a person other than a place. It originates from Scottish folklore.
8. The Witness
This is the story of a woman who witnessed the executions of over 278 death row inmates as part of her job. It was her job to witness them. (And you thought your job was bad...also just in case, you still need help being convinced that the death penalty is a very very bad idea.)
"For more than a decade, it was Michelle Lyons’s job to observe the final moments of death row inmates—but watching 278 executions did not come without a cost.
Texas Monthly |by Pamela Colloff "
Part I.
Ms. Lyons,
Hi, if you are reading this then they killed me. I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed talking to you, you seem like a really great lady. I’m sorry we didn’t meet under different circumstances. . . . Thank you for your kindness. Have a wonderful day.
—Letter from death row inmate Robert Coulson, June 25, 2002
Early one morning in April, Michelle Lyons pulled up outside her daughter’s elementary school in Huntsville, seventy miles north of Houston. Set deep in the Piney Woods, Huntsville—which is home to no fewer than five prisons—is a company town whose primary industry is confinement. Many parents who were dropping their children off at school that day worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville’s largest employer. Michelle, who sat behind the wheel of her blue Chevy sedan nursing a travel mug of coffee, had worked for TDCJ herself for more than a decade. She had been the public face of the agency, a disarmingly friendly, upbeat spokesperson for the biggest prison system in the nation. Though she had left the position two years earlier, she was still well-known around town, and several mothers waved as her car idled in the drop-off line. “Have a beautiful day,” she murmured when her nine-year-old leaned in to kiss her goodbye.
When Michelle first went to work for TDCJ, in 2001, she had begun each weekday morning by driving into town, past the picturesque courthouse square and toward the Walls Unit, the 165-year-old penitentiary that is Huntsville’s most iconic landmark. The prison, whose ramparts measure more than thirty feet high, is a colossal, foreboding structure crowned by razor wire—a two-block-long, red-brick fortress that houses the most active death chamber in the country. Michelle’s office occupied a corner of an administrative building directly across the street from the Walls, and one of the requirements of her job as a public information officer had been to attend every execution the state carried out. She had also attended executions for her previous job, as a reporter covering prisons for the hometown newspaper, the Huntsville Item. Michelle spent many evenings—hundreds, in fact—standing shoulder-to-shoulder with witnesses in a cramped room that afforded a view of the death chamber, where she watched as men, and two women, were injected with a three-drug cocktail that stopped their hearts. All told, she had seen 278 inmates put to death.
As Michelle pulled away from the school, she headed out of Huntsville, toward Interstate 45 and her new job more than an hour’s drive away, in downtown Houston. She cracked her window, grateful for the cool air on her face. Mornings, when her commute offered time to think back on everything she had seen at the Walls, were the hardest. She was flooded with memories from her time inside the Death House: of the conversations she had shared with particular inmates in the hours before they were strapped to the gurney; of the mothers, dressed in their Sunday best, who had turned out to attend their sons’ executions; of the victims’ families, their faces hardened with grief; of the sudden stillness that came over the prisoners soon after the lethal drugs entered their bloodstreams. She could still see some of these men—their chests expanding, their chins stiffening as they took their last breaths.
These memories intruded with such frequency that Michelle no longer tried to push them out of her mind. Instead, she had started recording voice memos, letting her thoughts unspool as she drove alone in the car. She kept one eye on the road that morning as she rummaged through her purse for her iPhone, finally fishing it out and holding the microphone up to her mouth. “I support the death penalty,” she began. “I believe that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only way you can truly pay your debt to society is with your life.” She spoke with the same deliberation she had used when addressing reporters outside the Walls after high-profile executions. “But in other cases, I feel very conflicted,” she added. “There are men I watched die that I don’t think should have.” A piece of folk art she had picked up on a trip to Austin—an evil-eye charm to ward off bad spirits—bobbed from her rearview mirror. “I thought being away from the prison system would make me think about it less, but it’s been quite the opposite,” she continued. “I think about it all the time.”
As she approached Houston’s outer suburbs, the East Texas pines receded, replaced by roadside billboards hawking vasectomy reversals and personal injury lawyers and Chick-fil-A. Michelle thought back to a few months earlier, when she had called her former boss, Larry Fitzgerald, on the way to work, as she did every now and then to check in on him. The authoritative sound of his voice—Larry had been a radio news reporter back in the sixties—had always reassured her. It was Larry who had recruited her to TDCJ, and their friendship had continued after he retired and Michelle succeeded him as the agency’s director of public information. Though Larry was 38 years her senior, they had remained close because of the peculiar history they shared. Wardens, guards, and prison administrators had come and gone, but she and Larry had each been a constant presence, attending virtually every execution during the period when George W. Bush’s bid for the presidency had thrust Texas into the international spotlight.
Despite all the time the two had spent together—the workday lunches, the happy hours, the long evenings waiting to hear if the appellate courts would grant a reprieve—Michelle had never asked Larry how he felt about watching inmates die, and he had never offered his opinion. So when she had phoned him from the road the previous fall and he had casually mentioned that he was having nightmares—which he downplayed by calling them dreams—about his time inside the Walls, his words had sent a jolt through her. She could still picture the exact moment he made this admission: she had been making a turn onto the Hardy Toll Road, and the morning sun had been unbearably bright. That Larry too was struggling had unnerved her. He had always been the less serious one, the one who could shrug off the solemnity of the moment with a dry aside. Often after they exited the Death House, he would suggest they go drink margaritas.
Michelle had forgotten where she had left off with her dictation. She was thinking about Larry, wondering which executions he relived in his dreams. Her own hard moments came when she was awake. She could still picture Ricky McGinn’s mother, an elderly woman who had arrived at her son’s execution in a floral dress and pearls. Michelle would never forget watching her try to rise from her wheelchair so she could see through the large pane of glass that separated her from the death chamber. On the other side lay her son, who had been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. McGinn was flat on his back, each limb restrained with leather straps, an IV line stuck in each arm. The old woman, her wrinkled hands pressed to the glass, had watched intently as her son’s body went slack. Michelle thought about her as she drove to work that morning. When the Houston skyline rose up in front of her, she realized her face was wet with tears.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 01:08 pm (UTC)My girlfriend in high school had a very long last name that she told me she was eager to get rid of. I suspect she's happy her husband's last name turned out to be half as long as her maiden name. My grad school girlfriend's last name was only slightly shorter. But she kept it for professional reasons. If she'd married me I would have expected her to do the same, though we never discussed it.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 03:33 pm (UTC)half of those who responded said they believe that it should be a legal requirement, not a choice
Fuck them. I am surprised though that if that study used a random sample that they even found 25 men who had done the opposite. Although I do know someone here on DW whose husband took her name.
I didn’t want to do anything too out of the norm.
And there you have it. I'm reminded of the polling regarding impeachment. Most people are utter sheep. In news stories they talked about how during the lead up to Nixon's threatened impeachment, up until he was about to be impeached polls showed that people were against it. As soon as the decision was made to start impeachment and he resigned, suddenly the majority of those polled were in favor. Gay marriage? The same thing. Trump's impeachment? Same thing. In other words it is rare that the majority of people will take a stand they see as being outside the norm even if it is to a pollster and not anyone they know.
Good set of links!
no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 09:18 pm (UTC)I'm wondering though...and every human is different, but I think it probably eats away at you bit by bit. When she left the prison system she thought about it more than when she was there -- possibly because she compartmentalized it or shoved it to one side. But over time, much like rain wearing away stone, that sort of thing wears away at the human spirit. She even asks at one point if she's a good person for not feeling more.
The problem with the death penalty is it would be one thing if it took out the truly irredeemable souls, the serial killers, the pure unabashed sociopaths, but in truth it executes many people who don't deserve it and can be rehabilitated and do deserve a second chance. Also I'm not sure that our justice system is a fair arbitrator of that -- if anything I'd say just the opposite. Those who support the death penalty are either niave about the justice system or doing for the wrong reasons. And they really don't understand how expensive the process truly is. I sort of wish that the state took the expense out of the paychecks, bank accounts, or savings of the people who vocally support it -- if that happened they wouldn't support it.
And there you have it. I'm reminded of the polling regarding impeachment. Most people are utter sheep. In news stories they talked about how during the lead up to Nixon's threatened impeachment, up until he was about to be impeached polls showed that people were against it. As soon as the decision was made to start impeachment and he resigned, suddenly the majority of those polled were in favor. Gay marriage? The same thing. Trump's impeachment? Same thing. In other words it is rare that the majority of people will take a stand they see as being outside the norm even if it is to a pollster and not anyone they know.
Interestingly enough? There's more people who want to impeach Trump than there were for either Nixon or Clinton. (Clinton's impeachment was sort of dumb since it was over infidelity, and considering that the people trying to impeach him were doing the same things...it was hypocritical. I'm sort of enjoying the fact that they all ended up on the opposite side of that argument years later.)
But yeah, I agree - people are lemmings or sheep. They don't like change, they don't like getting uncomfortable or out of their comfort zone. In short the human being is a selfish creature who only takes action when it either furthers or protects their own self interest.
ETA: Thank you.