Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Scientists find far higher than expected rate of underwater glacial melting

Tidewater glaciers, the massive rivers of ice that end in the ocean, may be melting underwater much faster than previously thought, according to a new study that used robotic kayaks. The findings, which challenge current frameworks for analyzing ocean-glacier interactions, have implications for the rest of the world's tidewater glaciers, whose rapid retreat is contributing to sea-level rise.

Patented designs are supposed to be useless, but they’re not supposed to be basic and conventional—like this month’s Stupid Patent. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/design-patents-are-useless-so-why-are-they-getting-boost-dc

RT @eff: BREAKING: We’ve confirmed that the Ring doorbell app on Android covertly shares personally identifiable information on its users w…

Who Was That Greta Girl Again?

People who comment on Greta Thunberg’s personality, demeanor and looks should instead focus on the fact that she is right that we face an existential environmental crisis.

Facebook has just released a tool that lets you turn off some third-party tracking. But changing the new setting requires 9 different clicks, in a corner of the site that most users will never see.

Here’s how to go turn it off now. (1/6) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/how-change-your-facebook-activity-settings

Trump’s NLRB Quietly Makes It Riskier To Wear Union Schwag at Work

The Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ended 2019 by rolling back another round of Obama-era regulations and handing down a number of pro-employer decisions. One of those rulings restricts workers from wearing union buttons and other pro-labor insignia.

Don't dismiss compulsory student tracking via a phone app just because it's limited to athletes. These measures always start with a small powerless group, then use that "success" to justify expanding to others. #privacy

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14274

An egg a day not tied to risk of heart disease

The controversy about whether eggs are good or bad for your heart health may be solved, and about one a day is fine. A team of researchers found the answer by analyzing data from three large, long-term multinational studies.

Walnuts may slow cognitive decline in at-risk elderly

Eating walnuts may help slow cognitive decline in at-risk groups of the elderly population, according to a study conducted by researchers in California and Spain.

Lab turns trash into valuable graphene in a flash

Scientists are using high-energy pulses of electricity to turn any source of carbon into turbostratic graphene in an instant. The process promises environmental benefits by turning waste into valuable graphene that can then strengthen concrete and other composite materials.

Current model for storing nuclear waste is incomplete

The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high level nuclear waste will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew, because of the way those materials interact, new research shows. The findings show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in the chemistry the nuclear waste solution, and because of the way the materials interact with one another.

Researchers advance solar material production

A team has developed a more efficient, safer, and cost-effective way to produce cadmium telluride (CdTe) material for solar cells or other applications, a discovery that could advance the solar industry and make it more competitive.

Sea level rise to cause major economic impact in the absence of further climate action

Rising sea levels, a direct impact of the Earth's warming climate, is intensifying coastal flooding. The findings of a new study show that the projected negative economy-wide effects of coastal flooding are already significant until 2050, but are then predicted to increase substantially towards the end of the century if no further climate action on mitigation and adaptation is taken.

Patterns of thinning of Antarctica's biggest glacier are opposite to previously observed

Using the latest satellite technology from the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists have been tracking patterns of mass loss from Pine Island -- Antarctica's largest glacier.

Young People Don’t Support Biden. Why Does the Establishment Still Think He’s the Most “Electable”?

And so, we begin the Roaring 2020s with war, assassination and firestorms on a burning Earth. We know it will be a decisive decade. What remains to be seen is whether, here in the United States, “We the People” break with the rule of the corporate oligarchy and take measures to ensure a democratic future on a habitable planet. The window of opportunity to save the world has become a narrow slit. Will we make it through?

That will be determined in no small measure by the 2020 General Election, which is shaping up to be a three-way race in a two-party system.

First, we have the Republican Party, its fealty fully pledged to President Donald Trump. The Christian Right loves that he is stacking the courts with culture warriors. The corporate Right likes that he cuts taxes and guts environmental regulations. And white nationalists like his racist theatrics and the gratuitous cruelty of his immigration policies.

Second, we have the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and its standard bearers Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Their populist calls for a redistribution of wealth and an expansion of a social democratic welfare state—tuition-free public college, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—resonate with a growing number of voters.

Third, we have the Democratic establishment. It has hitched its wagon to the concept of “electability,” which national polls reveal to be a top concern of Dems. In other words: Who can beat Trump? These centrist Democrats and their allies in the corporate media vehemently oppose any meaningful attempts to redistribute wealth and power. Bereft of appealing policy proposals to inspire the base, they have weaponized “electability,” using it to limit the range of possible candidates, both in demographics and ideology. It is also employed as a cudgel against any transformative policy, the argument being that Big Change will spook independent voters—and thereby help reelect Trump—completely ignoring the potential of big ideas to turn out voters otherwise likely to sit out.

Their candidate is Joe “Electable” Biden. Their candidate’s main policy expert is Bruce Reed, who accompanies Biden on the campaign trail. As architect of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 so-called welfare reform, Reed coined the “end welfare as we know it” slogan. A former CEO of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council, Reed left his post in 2010 to serve as executive director of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the deficit by cutting cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Why Biden is so electable—a 77-year-old candidate who stepped onto the national stage in 1972 as the junior senator from Delaware and has twice run (and lost badly) for president—is never explained. A 1995 video has surfaced of Biden speaking in favor of a GOP-sponsored balanced-budget amendment. “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he bragged. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” And his backing of the Iraq War has rightly dogged him: As CNN reported, at a January 4 event in Des Moines, Iowa, “Biden again dishonestly suggests he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.”

Is it any wonder that young people are not flocking to the Biden campaign? In a December 2019 poll of Iowa voters, only 6% of likely Democratic caucus-goers between 18 and 34 supported Biden, while 55% supported Warren or Sanders. For a Democratic Party establishment truly concerned with electability—now and in the future—that is the poll to pay attention to. 

Why Centrist Democrats Can’t Get to Bernie Sanders

Centrist Democrats find themselves in a quandry: the more they attack Bernie Sanders, the more that voters support him. If only there was a solution.