Due to intense heat and drought in Mexico howler monkeys are falling dead from trees - ABC News
“They were falling out of the trees like apples,” Pozo said. “They were in a state of severe dehydration, and they died within a matter of minutes.”
Pozo attributes the deaths to a “synergy” of factors, including high heat, drought, forest fires and logging that deprives the monkeys of water, shade and the fruit they eat…
Damnnnnnn.
Video posted by Nando161 on Mastodon, Original source: Aamer Rahman culture war standup comedy mix tape
“Everything in Palestine is what happened, and what’s going to happen - it’s the past and the future at the same time…”
The US, as always, blocks progress and justice while the world moves towards a better future. The US is not a positive force in the world:
Norway, Spain and Ireland will soon be added to the UN document A/78/846 that contains all UN members that formally recognise the State of Palestine. ATM the document is also missing Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas, since the last update was 2020-04-09 and their letters arrived after that date. After the next update the list will have 146 entries of the 193 member states.
Ireland, Norway and Spain recognise Palestine as independent state | Sky News
Ireland, Norway and Spain have officially recognised Palestine as a separate state, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors from two of the European states.
Speaking on Wednesday, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said: “Today Ireland, Norway and Spain are announcing that we recognise the state of Palestine, each of us will undertake whatever national steps are necessary to give effect to that decision.
“I am confident that further countries will join us in taking this important step in the coming weeks.”
I enjoyed reading this post by Apple Annie, a reflection on how she uses Mastodon and her difficulties with Micro.blog:
Micro.blog’s community approach is still a struggle for me. As I built my little communities across Mastodon instances I relied on the Local timelines of many instances to get a feel for their users and core conversations.
Reading this I realized that the micro.blog community timeline is just an overly restricted, locked-down and frustrating alternative to the more open experince of a Mastodon instance. I’ve been struggling for awhile to find “my people” on Micro.blog. The best solution is to stop struggling and follow and interact from my social.coop Mastodon account instead. And I follow most of those folks via RSS as well.
Annie describes this experience very well:
I also relied heavily on perusing follower lists of people I found interesting in order to find other interesting accounts to follow. Neither of those things are easy to accomplish on Micro.blog. There is no Local timeline, there is a hand-curated Discover timeline at the whims of one or more people’s preferences, inherent biases (whether conscious or not), and the rules set out by Micro.blog.
Yep. I’m not going to work around Manton’s choices to make discovery here more difficult. What he calls curation I call hostile.
We can search using the Discover timeline and search by emoji (the equivalent of hashtags) but even I find myself not using these emoji with my own content so I’m not sure others are using it with theirs. Finding my community on Micro.blog has been tedious! I sometimes feel I only go there to talk to myself by way of posting to my blog.
Yep. And sidenote. This morning as I browse my list of micro.blog folk via Mastodon that liking their posts is like pointless. I know that because I’m aware of Manton’s choice to not allow likes to display or even quietly notify users. But it irks me to no end that Mastodon users that might follow micro.blog accounts are unaware that their likes are not communicated in any way. It’s one person trying to offer something to another, just a friendly nod, and they have no way of knowing that it will not be received. It just seems like a hostile action, an interruption of communication. It’s a little thing but it pisses me off.
Democracy Now! interview with Lily Greenberg Call, First Jewish Biden Appointee to Publicly Resign over Gaza
She was a special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department. She quit on May 15 in a four-page letter that slammed Biden’s “disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Greenberg Call is at least the fifth high-profile resignation from the Biden administration since October 7.
“I am so angry at the president that he is using my community as justification for this slaughter, making us the face of the American war machine.”
Biden’s continued statements in support of Israel and his denial of genocide is truly disgusting. He seems to assume that the US and Israel are above the law.
Israel and the United States have both strongly condemned the International Criminal Court’s decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges, calling it “outrageous” and seeking support from other allies in opposing the court’s moves. On Monday, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan outlined specific charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, including “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “extermination.” The ICC also sought arrest warrants for three leaders of Hamas — Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif — for war crimes including extermination and murder, the taking of captives, torture, rape and other acts of sexual violence. The warrants for Israel’s top leaders, which must still be approved by a panel of ICC judges, is “a watershed event in the history of international justice,” says war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. “This is the first time that a Western or pro-Western leader is [the] subject of an indictment request.” We also speak with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, who says Israel’s strident response to the ICC prosecutor is no surprise. “This is the kind of Israel we have in 2024. It doesn’t care about international law. It doesn’t care about international opinion,” says Pappé.
The World Is Ignoring the Other Deadly Kind of Carbon | WIRED
Once again, vast expanses of Canadian wilderness are on fire, threatening towns and forcing thousands to flee. It appears to be a breakout of “zombie fires”: wildfires from last year that never actually went out completely but carried on smoldering underground, reigniting ground vegetation again this year. They’ve been pouring smoke—once again—into northern cities in the United States.
No, they’re not equivalent. Israel has done, is now doing, far worse.
Biden has no credibility on this and he is complicit.
Biden denounces ICC for ‘outrageous’ implication of equivalence between Israel and Hamas | CNN
The Biden administration on Monday forcefully denounced efforts by the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli officials and Hamas leaders, saying the court’s efforts put the terrorist organization and a top US ally on equivalent footing.
Arrest warrants sought for Hamas and Israel leadership: Statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine | International Criminal Court
Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant
On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023:
- Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
- Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
- Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
- Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h);
- Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).
Today’s headlines:
- Joe Biden continues to arm Israel in the face of war crimes and genocide.
- ICC seeks arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for Gaza ‘war crimes’.
Democratic Party: Looks like we have no choice but to run Joe Biden for president.
Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t | The Guardian
Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war
Meanwhile:
Benjamin Netanyahu arrest warrant sought for Gaza ‘war crimes’
Missourians must remain vigilant to protect our initiative petition process • Missouri Independent
The initiative petition process is the means by which we as citizens can directly participate in our democracy. Preserving that right could not be more important than when it comes to amending our state constitution.
Being able to continue to do that without hurdles and encumbrances survived — at least until the next Missouri legislative session.
Thanks to an historic filibuster, a convoluted and misleading bill that would make it more difficult for Missourians to pass an initiative petition that amends the state constitution failed to pass this year.
ZNet reports on the extreme heat wave covering some of the most densely populated regions of the world.. Wide areas of south and Southeast Asia, from Pakistan to the Philippines, have experienced prolonged extreme heat affecting everything from human health to the economy and education.
Many pupils in India, Bangladesh, and Philippines have been told to stay at home for days due to a severe health risk from extreme heat, while the heatwaves are becoming a major issue in India’s election. Bangladesh even closed all primary schools for weeks while the temperature reached 43.8°C on April 30.
Concerning the state of iPadOS and a very tired Federico Viticci
Federico Viticci’s recent post, Not an iPad Pro Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right, has been circulating this week and I finally finished it. While I agree with some of his suggestions in various sections, most of it reads to me as his personal wishlist of nice-to-haves rather than the basics he deems essential.
His concluding paragraphs made me chuckle. Apparently he’s tired of people disagreeing with him and any of us that do are deluded. Look, my dude, I’m not sure I’ve come across anyone suggesting that iPadOS is perfect, is anyone actually saying that? I am someone who is actually quite satisfied with iPadOS and the path it has been on. It’s okay that people disagree, we can do that. And I guess he can just continue being tired of hearing opinions that do not agree with his.
America remains the best “democracy” money can buy.
Pro-Israel billionaires urged New York crackdown on Gaza protests | Al Jazeera
WhatsApp leaks reveal group of business leaders discussed ways to pressure officials to clear pro-Palestine protesters.
A handful of powerful businessmen pushed New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crack down on pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, donating to the politician and offering to pay for private investigators to help break up the demonstrations, the Washington Post has reported, based on leaked WhatsApp conversations.
The story, published on Thursday, says that several billionaires seeking to influence public perception of Israel’s war in Gaza discussed means of pushing the mayor and the university’s president to end the protests, which were eventually cleared last month amid criticism of the police’s heavy-handed response.
Microsoft’s Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources | PCMag
What good is AI if you don’t have a planet to use it on?
Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it’s mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft’s emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to “new technologies, including generative AI.”
…It’s now full steam ahead on selling the Copilot AI assistant add-on for Microsoft 365 products while building a new AI model that consumes tons of electricity during the training phase alone.
The Guardian sent a survey to 843 of the world’s top climate scientists, these were lead authors and review editors of the IPCC reports since 2018. 380 replied. They don’t sleep at night and they are scared.
Hundreds of climate experts expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels by 2100…
Reading the responses, he could feel this “overwhelming feeling of frustration and despair and unhappiness at being ignored for so many years, and the difficulty they’re having of living with this information”.
What American Fascism Would Look Like | The New Republic
It can happen here. And if it does, here is what might become of the country.
Jewish Biden appointee resigns, accusing US president of having ‘blood on his hands’ - YouTube
Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi reports from Washington, DC, highlighting the recent resignation of Lily Greenberg Call, marking the first departure among Biden appointees due to President Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Another notable resignation came from a Jewish member of the US administration, a career military officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Israeli Human Rights Lawyer Attacked While Documenting Settler Raid on Gaza Aid Convoy
Aid agencies are running out of food in southern Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing offensive in Rafah and the shutdown of the two main border crossings in the south. Some 1.1 million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations, while a “full-blown famine” is taking place in the north. Meanwhile, some Israelis have been blocking aid from reaching the Gaza border, including a violent attack on trucks carrying humanitarian relief through the occupied West Bank earlier this week.”