Multimedia exploration of Juneteenth:
Juneteenth | National Museum of African American History and Culture
On June 19, 1865, nearly two years after President Abraham Lincoln emancipated enslaved Africans in America, Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas with news of freedom. More than 250,000 African Americans embraced freedom by executive decree in what became known as Juneteenth or Freedom Day. With the principles of self-determination, citizenship, and democracy magnifying their hopes and dreams, those Texans held fast to the promise of true liberty for all.
Up First briefing: Why Juneteenth is for all Americans : NPR
It commemorates the day federal troops arrived to enforce The Emancipation Proclamation in Texas some two years after it was issued. More broadly, though, it celebrates the end of chattel slavery. To my mind, it celebrates the beginning of true freedom because — as moral philosophers have long known — no one is free until everyone is because oppression ensnares the oppressor as well as the oppressed. Anyone who has ever been in a toxic relationship knows that.
A practical guide to building community resilience. Ordered.
Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire | Verso Books
In this book Adam Greenfield, author of Radical Technologies, recovers lessons from the Black Panther survival programs, the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece, as well as municipalist Spain and autonomous Rojava, to show how practices of mutual care and local power can help shelter us from a future that often feels like it has no place for us or the values we cherish.
"Everyone has seen, this can actually undo everything else that you have in your life." - Daniel Gallas
From the BBC's Global Story Podcast: Is Brazil's flood catastrophe a climate warning?
It shouldn't be framed as a question because it's obvious. Yes. The answer is yes.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared it a "climate catastrophe". Officials are writing off whole neighbourhoods – telling residents these places can never be made safe.
Just a glimpse of the incredible suffering that is already being endured by those that live in the Global South. The majority of the human population have not created the climate emergency that they bear the brunt of.
All of us in the U.S. are a part of the top 10%, our lifestyles are causing this suffering. We may not realize it but our day-to-day energy use is the cause of this suffering.
We must change how we live. Now.
In May 2024 there was more record-breaking heat across the globe.
Parts of Southeast Asia, because of geographical location, suffered particularly-extreme temperatures.
Israel's plan:
- Bomb Gaza into rubble
- Continue the violence and land theft in the West Bank
So, the complete removal of all Palestinians. Genocide.
Israel Plots West Bank Settlement Expansion as More States Recognize Palestine | Truthout
The announcement comes amid an unprecedented wave of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Top Israeli officials on Sunday discussed plans to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank as an act of retaliation against countries that recently joined the majority of the international community in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
50,000 Children in Gaza Need to Be Treated for Acute Malnutrition, UNRWA Says | Truthout
Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian aid has pushed tens of thousands of children in Gaza to the point of requiring medical treatment for starvation and malnutrition, the UN reported on Saturday.
According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), there are currently over 50,000 children in Gaza who need to be treated for acute malnutrition — or nearly a tenth of Gaza’s population of children.
It's getting much worse and will keep getting worse.
A war on children.
UNICEF Decries Israel's "War on Children" as Starvation & Deaths Mount in Gaza - YouTube UNICEF spokesperson James Elder in Rafah:
"The physical and psychological exhaustion they face is almost impossible to capture," he says, characterizing Israel's offensive as "a war on children."
Excellent practical advice for the necessary adaptions to the climate emergency. But it's important to remember that adaption is much easier for the wealthier nations of the Global North.
Extreme heat is getting worse. Can we learn to live with it? | The Excerpt - YouTube
May 2024 marked the twelfth straight month of record-high temperatures for the planet. Here in the U.S., temperatures across the country are likely to break records again this summer, increasing health risks to those spending long periods outdoors – from construction workers to migrants illegally crossing the border.
Democrat Khanna: Biden is ‘running out of time’ with young voters over Gaza war | The Guardian
Progressive California Democrat Ro Khanna warned Sunday that Joe Biden is running out of time to win over young voters opposed to his administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict and that he will not attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress next month.
Watching the world burn.
A fast-moving wildfire spreads north of Los Angeles, forcing evacuations : NPR
California’s wildfire season is off to an aggressive start. This year so far, fires have consumed about 41,900 acres, higher than the average of 27,100 acres burned during the same period for the past five years, according to CalFire data.
Despite huge PR push, is US plan for Gaza doomed to fail? | The Bottom Line - YouTube
How “permanent” is the US/Israeli plan for a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza? The intentional vagueness of the proposal to bring a “sustainable period of calm” to the Gaza Strip is the biggest obstacle preventing a deal, argues Michael Hanna of the International Crisis Group.
When it comes to confronting the white supremacy that the 10% of the Global North quietly uphold and defend we can't be polite. This system is violent, genocidal and is responsible for our climate emergency.
There is no reason to play nice. Their lifestyles are making the planet unlivable.
Apparently Apple's new design for tabs in iPadOS 18 app windows is not going over well. Reading these posts I would agree, this looks like a regression. Yuck.
Nico, the developer of the Gamery app has a post, Let's talk about the new tabs and sidebar in iPadOS 18.
Viticci also posted about it, specifically about the design of the new Books app.
Effectively, by eschewing a sidebar, the app has returned to feeling like a blown-up iPhone version – something I hoped we had left behind when Apple announced they wanted to make iPad apps more desktop-class two years ago.
Apple Matches Donations to IDF and Illegal Settlements, Employees Allege
An open letter from Apple employees and shareholders demands the tech giant stop matching employee donations to organizations with ties to the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip and ongoing illegal settlement development in the West Bank. The letter, building on a previous demand by Apple employees for a ceasefire in the conflict, calls on the company to “promptly investigate and cease matching donations to all organizations that further illegal settlements in occupied territories and support the IDF.”
An inspiring, somewhat comforting episode of The Great Simplification podcast: The Next Generation’s Dilemma: Confronting the Metacrisis.
As the human predicament continues to accelerate, the conversations regarding the future are still dominated by older generations - yet it is their younger successors who will face the brunt of these issues throughout their lives. Today’s Reality Roundtable with Priscilla Trịnh, James Branagan, and Natasha Linhart, focuses on Generation Z’s perspective of the metacrisis, how learning the reality of the human predicament has affected their worldview, and what they see as viable future paths for themselves and the world. How might we approach intergenerational relationships to encourage the transfer of knowledge in both directions, without blame or resentment? What are the unique challenges that young people face when addressing the layers of complexity and risk in the world, and thinking about how to respond? Could fostering community, empathy, and personal responsibility act as a bridge across generational divides, steering us towards a more unified and compassionate future?
Let me clue you in if you have any delusions about this: Yes, the polar bears will go extinct and not just this particular sub-group. Also, The Paris Agreement Goals are missed. This is a certainty.
If Paris Agreement Goals Are Missed, These Polar Bears Could Go Extinct - The New York Times
Polar bears in the Southern Hudson Bay could go extinct as early as the 2030s because the sea ice that helps them hunt for food is thinning, a new study suggests.
“We’ve known that the loss of Arctic sea ice would spell disaster for polar bears, so this might be the first subpopulation that disappears.”
Yesterday’s Majority Report includes an interview with Greg Stoker that provides a great deal of context and insight into the complete clusterfuck that is Israel’s operation in Gaza. The interview begins at 15:00
Stoker looks to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which has made the US military look nearly discriminate by contrast, walking through how Israel has eviscerated every central piece of infrastructure of Gaza society, and demonstrated a divide in the tactics of Western Imperialism and outright genocide. Expanding on this, Greg and Emma tackle the narrative around ongoing ceasefire negotiations, assessing why this conflict has largely been a success for Hamas and a failure for Israel, with no real end in sight for the occupier, also touching on Israel’s increasingly irrational violence towards other regional actors like Iran. Wrapping up the interview, Stoker touches on the US’ dwindling soft power, what that means in the context of their supposed foreign policy pivot to Asia, and what THAT means in the context of US support for Israel’s genocide.
Is Applebot a problem?
I generally don't agree with Federico Viticci's post at MacStories about Apple's AI Foundation Models and Applebot Web Scraping:
This blog post, however, pretty much parallels my reaction to the WWDC keynote. Everything was fun and cool until they showed generative image creation that spits out slop “resembling” (strong word) other people; and in this post, everything was cool until they mentioned how – surprise! – Applebot had already indexed web content to train their model without publishers’ consent, who can only opt out now. (This was also confirmed by Apple executives elsewhere.)
As a creator and website owner, I guess that these things will never sit right with me. Why should we accept that certain data sets require a licensing fee but anything that is found “on the open web” can be mindlessly scraped, parsed, and regurgitated by an AI?
Perhaps I'm a weirdo but I actually thought the images Apple shared in the presentation on Image Playground were pretty adorable even the one being referred to as SLOP. Ostensibly an image of a mom in a cape, to my eyes it looked like it could have been clipped out of a Pixar movie. I honestly don't know why so many people seemed to have had such a negative reaction to it.
Chides?
The NYT headline of this story trivializes it: Justice Department Chides Phoenix Police Over Civil Rights Violations
The Phoenix Police headquarters in 2018, the year the department had the highest number of fatal police shootings in the United States.
The Guardian/AP get it right:
‘Pervasive failings’: Phoenix police kill civilians without justification, US says | The Guardian
Phoenix police violate people’s rights, discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Native American people when enforcing the law and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force…