Jules @afewbugs@librem.one

"A university has been found to have discriminated against an Indian lecturer on the grounds of race after it failed to reappoint her for a job she had been doing for five years, replacing her with a white candidate with no experience of the role.

Dr Kajal Sharma was 1 of only 2 senior lecturers at the University of Portsmouth who were not reappointed to their jobs when their contract came to an end, while 11 of 12 white colleagues were successful".

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/12/portsmouth-university-loses-discrimination-case-against-indian-lecturer-kajal-sharma

In today's New York Times a Homeowner Association tried to force a Maryland couple with a native garden to change to a tidy lawn. The complaint was that their garden was "attracting rodents, deer, snakes and bats, and that they were planting shrubs and bushes in no particular order." Yes, in no particular order!

Legal proceedings ensued and there's now a state law forbidding homeowner associations from banning eco-friendly gardens.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/climate/native-plants-lawns-homeowners.html

#biodiversity #gardens #urban #nature

When they ask "why so much focus on air travel" this is a *big* part of the answer

RT @CarbonBrief@twitter.com

NEW – Richest people in UK ‘use more energy flying’ than poorest do overall | @Josh_Gabbatiss@twitter.com w/ comment from @baltrusz@twitter.com @martiskainen@twitter.com

Read here: https://bit.ly/3Wj49zD

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/CarbonBrief/status/1603077570160885761

Currently sitting in a train station on my way to film at the National Grid control room for the Fully Charged Show. It’s -6C here. I know we have poorly insulated buildings here in the UK, but this is ridiculous. How much energy are we wasting because of design like this? (there is *no door* - the cafe area is just open to the outside)

The Boston University School of Public Health is withdrawing from Twitter.

The dean’s thoughtful, nuanced explanation raises the question: Why are other institutions still there?

https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/reconsidering-our-engagement-with-twitter/

Interesting new study in @nature today - the observed #Methane spike in the atmosphere last year seems to relate to 2 elements:
1) - increased emissions from wetlands in a warmer + wetter climate (yes that's a positive feedback)
2) - reduction of NOx (Nitrogen pollution from cars + industry) due to #COVID19 lockdowns reduced the rate at which methane is removed from the atmosphere by chemistry.

#AtmosphericChemistry #ClimateChange

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05447-w

Re: deadnaming

I explained to my mother that deadnaming and misgendering is like farting. If you do it by accident, and apologize, people will forgive you.

If you keep doing it, people will suggest you get that taken care of, maybe recommend you seek treatment, and ultimately avoid you.

If you bend over, stick your ass in their face, and let it rip though, then you shouldn’t be surprised people think you’re a clueless, hostile asshole.

(This is from an old post, but I wanted to keep it.)

A fascinating effect of AIs trained on open web crawls — which, to be clear, are machine algorithms with no notion of race or gender built into the code, which merely summarize and imitate whatever predominant patterns they encounter — is that we have a whole new category of empirical evidence for the existence of discrimination.

I’ve written about reporting on tragedies and when it tips over into voyeurism or even emotional vampirism. CW: it discusses an event in which children died.

https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/thin-ice

None of the venders are being paid & none of the landlords 🚨worldwide🚨 are receiving rent money either.

https://www.axios.com/2022/12/14/twitter-elon-musk-paying-bills-rent

Some landlords were willing to give Twitter a discount on the debt owed but Twitter oddly rejected the offers. They must be running out of cash!
I am going to upgrade my Mastodon storage this week, as we may experience another Twitter exodus sooner rather than later.

It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of CO₂. I propose we talked about CO₂ removal (CDR) like a time machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example:

Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million trees take us?

A: If one mature tree takes up an average of 25 kg of CO₂ per year, then 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back 33 minutes and 6 seconds in a year. It's not a lot.

The CEO of #Twitter is now Tweeting full blown #CoViD19 disinformation, wilfully misleading his millions of braindead followers with his moronity.

The man is not only a threat to democracy he’s a threat to human life.

#ShutTwitterDown

December 14.
The lazy horse

Namibia.
The people of a village have to cross lion territory to go to the city market. They ride their horses at full speed to make the trip as fast as possible.
One man has a lazy horse that keeps stopping to eat and rest. On the way back they are attacked by lions. All horses are so tired they can't get away fast enough - but the lazy horse is well rested and has the strength to escape.

#Selfcare is important, people. 🐎

#GentleFolktales #folktales #folklore

On their #Flickr account, #NASA #Johnson #space center released this #astonishing #picture of the full #Moon setting below #Earth's horizon, and taken from the International Space Station #ISS.

This kind of #photography always reminds me how thin the #Earth #atmosphere actually is, while it protects us from the constant influx of deadly radiation & micro-meteors.

The atmosphere is what allows us *all* to breath, hence to live on this #planet.

#ClimateChange

➡️ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/52553252268

I think it's important to spell out exactly what's happening with Twitter layoffs because there's so much euphemism in US press when it comes to actions of the rich that it's easy to miss.
1. Musk couldn't afford Twitter so he took out $13bln in loans
2. When you're rich, you can "buy" a business with loans and the make the business pay back your loan for you
3. Twitter now has $1bln/year in new expenses paying those loans
4. Musk is taking people's salaries and using them to pay off his loan

Gove’s defence of UK coalmine dismissed as ‘greenwashing nonsense’ - Head of offsetting standard rubbishes minister’s claim of Cumbrian mine’s carbon neutrality as ‘absurd’Michael Gove’s justification for approving the UK’s first coalmine in three decades is “obviously nonsense” and has no climate justification, according to the carbon offsetting standard whose... #theguardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/13/gove-defence-of-uk-coalmine-dismissed-as-greenwashing-nonsense