oxane: Alexandra Valenti
crisisgroup: Listen to Crisis Group's Turkey/Cyprus Project...
Listen to Crisis Group's Turkey/Cyprus Project Director, Hugh Pope, discuss protest and crackdown in Turkey with Tom Ashbrook of WBUR's On Point.
Photo: Elif Altinbasak/Flickr
Pope's segment starts at 37:40
The Political Notebook: Can you hear me now? Metadata, civil liberties and homeland security
The Political Notebook: Can you hear me now? Metadata, civil liberties and homeland security:While there has been due outrage about the news regarding the NSA's Verizon surveillance program, there has also been a loud echo of Senator Lindsey Graham's "I am a Verizon customer. It doesn't bother me one bit for the NSA to have my phone number." See this Twitter account for a collection…
mental_floss on tumblr: 18 Wildly Successful People Who Lived With Their Parents
mental_floss on tumblr: 18 Wildly Successful People Who Lived With Their Parents:
Bloomberg Businessweek is taking a little heat for an ad campaign mocking lazy millennials who still live with their parents. Parents can send their kids BBW e-cards with messages like, "You were supposed to make us rich, but we'll settle for just not making us poor" and "We can't wait for…
heatherlbjeong: Alexandra Valenti
"We want to preserve our culture through our music. With hip-hop, we're always looking back to..."
"We want to preserve our culture through our music. With hip-hop, we're always looking back to our indigenous ancestors, the Aymaras, Quechuas, Guarani. […] Through our lyrics we criticize the bad politicians who take advantage of us."- Abraham Bojorquez on the hip-hop scene in El Alto, Bolivia.
"Emerging in the early days of the War on Terror, Tom Dispatch's fierce devotion to truth has proven..."
"Emerging in the early days of the War on Terror, Tom Dispatch's fierce devotion to truth has proven essential to navigating our Orwellian post-9/11 planet. Combining some of the most insightful and courageous voices on the web, the site strikes at the very foundations of power and propaganda. As we face down a new decade of drone warfare, counterinsurgency, and climate chaos, Tom Dispatch's forceful analysis and sharp investigative authority could scarcely be more vital."- Sam Ross-Brown, on why we gave TomDispatch the Utne Media Award for Political Coverage.
Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted by...
Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted by Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers via Democracy Now!
nevver: Young Turks
ilyagerner: At CC's Indecision, I wrote briefly about Swifto, a...
At CC's Indecision, I wrote briefly about Swifto, a start-up described by FT like so:
Swifto, the "Uber for dog walking", allows pet owners to "hail" a vetted, insured, and "college educated" dog walker, then track the walk via GPS on their phone.
When the revolution comes, the tech gurus behind Swifto are going to be among the first to the wall, but in the meantime, my friend Trav points out that Swifto's college-only recruitment policy is a good data point in the debate between the signaling v. human capital models of college education.
Most people — especially educators — would like to believe that the employment-rate and wage premiums that come with a college degree are a result of the skills college graduates have acquired in the course of their studies.
Proponents of the signaling model contend that a college degree doesn't confer marketable job skills, but it does send a signal to employers that you are a basically competent non-weirdo who will mostly show up on time and fill out the TPS reports without complaint. A four-year education is an experience in hoop-jumping. You have to keep track of major requirements, complete a general education curriculum, submit paperwork on time and be conscientious enough to pass exams. If you do this successfully, you get a degree that shows employers you're a conformist who can follow direction.
Count Swifto as a one piece of evidence in favor of the signaling camp. It's hard to believe that specific skills learned as a Biology or Political Science major make one an especially competent dog-walker. But graduating with those — or any major — does demonstrate your work ethic, conformity, and intelligence, all things that employers value.
The other public policy-related lesson here is that the economy still sucks if companies can get away with demanding that their dog walkers have BAs.
Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site
Fracking debris considered too radioactive even for waste site:A truck carrying drill cuttings from a fracking site set off a radiation alarm at a landfill in Pennsylvania. Emitting gamma radiation ten times higher than the permitted level, the waste was rejected by the landfill.
After the alarm went off, the MAX Environmental Technologies truck was immediately quarantined and sent back to the Marcellus Shale fracking site it had come from in Greene County, Va. The 159-acre Pennsylvania landfill site accepts residual and hazardous waste, but the cuttings were too radioactive for the site to safely dispose.
The Pennsylvania landfill, located in South Huntingdon, rejects waste that emits more than 10 microerm per hour of radiation. The fracking materials were found to emit 96 microerm per hour of Radium 226 – a rate that is 84 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's air-pollution standard and ten times higher than the landfill's permitted level, Forbes reports.
Exposure to the materials taken from the fracking site can have serious health consequences, including the risk of developing cancer. The high level of radiation emitted by the materials serves as alarming news for environmentalists and residents located near hydraulic fracturing sites across the US.
"Long-term exposure to radium increases the risk of developing several diseases," the EPA writes."Inhaled or ingested radium increases the risk of developing such diseases as lymphoma, bone cancer and diseases that affect the formation of blood, such as leukemia and aplastic anemia… External exposure to radium's gamma radiation increases the risk of cancer to varying degrees in all tissues and organs."
The drill cuttings have been sent back to the well pad where they were extracted. The production company, Rice Energy, must now apply to have the waste discarded at other landfill sites that accept materials with higher levels of radiation.
DEP spokesperson Jon Poister told The Tribune-Review that the cuttings emitted "low-level radiation, but we don't want any radiation in South Huntingdon." He said it was not typical for the landfill to reject waste based on radiation levels, but this case provides reassurance that the radiation detection system functions properly.
"It's not too frequent that this occurs, but it's not totally infrequent either," he told the local newspaper."There are all kinds of sources for that type of material, including medical materials, and this is a huge safeguard we have in place."
But environmentalists remain concerned about the effects of the radiation produced by hydraulic fracturing sites. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this year began analyzing wastewater from fracking sites and testing waste products for radioactivity. The investigation is ongoing.
"We are sampling the wastewater and wastes, the treatment equipment used to treat it, the trucks used to transport it, the tanks and pits used to store it and the landfills or treatment plants used to dispose of it,"DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday told shalereporter.com.
The consequences of long-term exposure to Radium 226 are known, but the effects of specially formulated chemicals used at US fracking sites still remain widely unknown. With the Obama administration overlooking environmental concerns and distributing oil drilling rights without a comprehensive review of fracking, it is difficult to know just how much radiation the sites produce.
But with landfill sites rejecting drill cuttings based on high levels of radiation, the waste produced is not an insignificant matter.
"There is an anarchist in all of us. Deep inside we yearn to be free from imposed constraints, to..."
"There is an anarchist in all of us. Deep inside we yearn to be free from imposed constraints, to rebel against authority, to grow, and to live more fully. The corporate media would have us believe that "anarchism" is something menacing, chaotic—the work of people who wear black bandanas and throw bombs. But we know better."- Chris Dodge, "Anarchism 101: A beginner's guide to the most misunderstood political movement in history."
From: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin' Sad
DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE TO DEALING WITH YOUR CRITICS/THE HATERS
1) Do not, under any circumstances, read the comments. "Anonymous" is not a real person. "Anonymous" is disappointment, weakness fighting back, and envy at its worse. The people who talk shit and complain and stick their nose in your business on the internet don't hate you, they hate themselves.2) This is how you win: Surprise everyone with the next thing you do.
3) Don't ever forget the reason you started doing what you do. When you do forget (and you will, if you get enough attention) find that thing again and get to know it. Have a second honeymoon with the things you once loved.
4) People will always shit on the things they're scared of.
5) There are some fine, intelligent, truthful critics out there. They won't praise, slam, or rage without reason. The rest are failed [fill-in-the-blanks] hurting you because you're doing what they couldn't.
6)Take the place of your heroes. It's okay.
7) Too many good ones are gone. Be the new good ones. And: You'll always have critics but if you listen to them we won't always have you.
Order this zine here at Pioneers Press http://pioneerspress.com/catalog/zines/4082/
(Photo from http://queerassfemme.tumblr.com/)
After much deliberation, some back-issue rereading, and more...
After much deliberation, some back-issue rereading, and more than one impassioned speech, we're very pleased to announce the winners of the 2013 Utne Media Awards. With a loaded field of top-notch nominees, choosing the winners wasn't easy, but the following publications stood out to us this year.
General Excellence — YES! Magazine
Best Writing — The New Inquiry
Best Political Coverage — TomDispatch
Best Arts Coverage — Colossal
Best Social/Cultural Coverage — Guernica
Best International Coverage — New Internationalist
Best Environmental Coverage — High Country News
Best Body/Spirit Coverage — Tricycle
Best Science/Technology Coverage — Scientific American
Read more about these publications and why they won.
motherjones: Are "superfoods" a scam?
lakotapeopleslawproject: South Dakota covered up and enables...
South Dakota covered up and enables sexual abuse of Lakota girls. When four Lakota foster girls in the Mette family's care testified that they were being brutally raped and abused, state officials didn't try to protect the girls—instead they tried to protect themselves. Then they accused two child advocates, the foster girls' most vocal allies, of making the children lie. They also dropped nearly every one of the felony charges against the abusive father. Even worse, the Lakota girls were still returned to the Mette foster family! South Dakota is abusing its power as a protector of children. Please, SHARE this video and SIGN our petition to get Congress and the Justice Department to investigate South Dakota. Watch: http://lakota.cc/17SEfVU Petition:http://lakota.cc/139N8qK
"Judging by the literature of my contemporaries, I am part of a generation that does no work. Most of..."
"Judging by the literature of my contemporaries, I am part of a generation that does no work. Most of us have jobs, I suppose: you, me, the people who write the stories and novels about people who do no work. We do something, at any rate, and though we may well spend long hours making money, for a variety of complicated and deeply entrenched reasons I will never really be able to convince myself that I am—or that we are—earning money or toiling in any true sense."- Brad Zellar, "Cutting Class."
treehugger: British performance collective Acrojou tackles the...
British performance collective Acrojou tackles the phenomenon of thinking big but living small in an act that features a delightful "wheel house" that literally rolls around. http://t.co/ClJwsLUm2w
"On May 31, police raided the park and used tear gas to disperse the protesters, prompting harsh..."
"On May 31, police raided the park and used tear gas to disperse the protesters, prompting harsh criticism of the Turkish government and its ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party. The uprising has now spread to dozens of cities across Turkey. As in the Arab Spring and the 2009 Iranian elections, protesters in Turkey used Twitter to communicate and organise demonstrations. A few hours into the protests, Twitter users had sent two million tweets with hashtags related to the park. At one point, thousands of people - organised through Twitter - crossed Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge on foot to reach the park."- Tweeting Turks sidestep mainstream media - Features - Al Jazeera English (via aboriginalpressnews)
The Healing Power of Cockroaches
For years, researchers have wondered how cockroaches manage to thrive, and now they finally have the answer. Scientists have identified nine antibiotic molecules in the brains of cockroaches and locusts that protect them from voracious, lethal bacteria. The implications of these findings cannot be overstated. Right now, even the most cutting-edge antibiotics can't keep up with bacteria's ability to constantly evolve and mutate. Keep reading.
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