Our new reality is constant adaption to extreme heat and other effects of the ongoing climate emergency: The mayor of Athens, Greece on extreme heat in the capital city: “It’s about survival”. The plan includes more cooling centers, water stations and planting a lot more trees for shade.
The Guardian reports on the mayor of Athens’s top priority:
Ensuring that the people of Greece’s capital – mainland Europe’s hottest metropolis – survive the summer. After a June that was the hottest on record, the city has already witnessed record-breaking temperatures and wildfires.
What a fucking joke. Shameful.
"Pier, which has delivered the equivalent of a single day’s pre-war land aid deliveries in two months, will reportedly be removed in a few days’ time"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/10/us-gaza-aid-pier-dismantled
Meanwhile, as the war crimes and genocide continue: Researchers Estimate True Gaza Death Toll at 186,000 or More | Truthout
https://truthout.org/articles/researchers-estimate-true-gaza-death-toll-at-186000-or-more/
What a fucking joke. Shameful.
Pier, which has delivered the equivalent of a single day’s pre-war land aid deliveries in two months, will reportedly be removed in a few days’ time
Meanwhile, as the war crimes and genocide continue: Researchers Estimate True Gaza Death Toll at 186,000 or More | Truthout
A well articulated, sobering assessment of the motivations of the Democratic and Republican parties in terms of the past 30-40 years and how it’s playing out in the current election. https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1dw5th8/dnc_wants_biden_to_lose/
A well articulated, sobering assessment of the motivations of the Democratic and Republican parties in terms of the past 30-40 years and how it’s playing out in the current election.
Apple’s marketing of the iPad as a general computing device
Riley Hill at SlatePad has an interesting look back at Apple’s marketing of the iPad as a laptop replacement
Sometimes the iPad is (sort of) marketed as a laptop replacement. Sometimes it’s marketed as a unique kind of device. Being something of an in between product can make iPad difficult to clearly market, but it’s fun to look back at some of the ways Apple has tried to communicate its value over time.
From day one Apple positioned the iPad between the iPhone and Mac. And I’m sure that many buyers were well established Apple users that had both. But in my extended family the iPad was not an in-between device for nerds that already had an iPhone and Mac. Rather, it was the first and only computer for the older generations that had never had a computer. Apple didn’t have to do much to market the iPad to this group. They saw the initial round of iPad ads and bought them without question. And it’s been my observation in the years since that they have all continued using iPads and upgrading every few years when batteries eventually failed or storage ran out.
For my parents, aunts and uncles, the iPad is a fun, easy, safe, no-maintenance device for people that want to use a computer without really thinking about computing. What makes the iPad special is that it gets out of their way. It’s just magic glass. Did Apple know what a hit the iPad would be with the older generations?
My original iPad docked in Apple’s Keyboard Stand
I was a Mac user that bought the first iPad and the Keyboard Dock and not long after I found the Gusto app which was likely the first built-for iPad text editor that included an ftp client and an interface specifically for managing web sites. So, early on I was using the iPad for managing client websites.
Jump forward five years to the introduction of the iPad Pro in 2015 and the accompanying statements by Tim Cook in this interview with The Telegraph:
“Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones."
My guess? Apple thought the iPad Pro really could be a notebook/laptop replacement for a few very specific groups of users like students not yet attached to Macs. They really leaned into this group a year later with the smaller 9.7" iPad Pro and the infamous “What’s a Computer?” ad.
But certainly they expected most Mac users would continue using Macs. They weren’t bothered by the idea that a few would switch to the iPad Pro because they knew that many would just end up using both. And they probably hoped that they might add new users that had, up to that point, been using an iPhone along with a Windows laptop.
There’s no way to know if they’ve met their goals with the iPad Pro but they’ve certainly stayed the course in the 9 years since its introduction. Slowly but surely they have iterated iPadOS while improving hardware. They’ve spent considerable time and resources bringing Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to iPad with version 2 just released.
My hunch is that they are satisfied with the open-ended role of the iPad in the larger Apple ecosystem. I doubt they feel the need to nail it down in the way that pundits want.
Another hunch partly based their Why iPad website is that Apple is primarily marketing the iPad to the younger age brackets. Everything about that page seems to speak to students, creatives and young professionals.
A sorry, screwed up situation on so many levels. A lot of denial, panic and fear going on in the Democratic Party. Completely unhinged.
Tiny Life Journal - In my woodland garden, two of my favorite native wildflowers: Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan. Growing nearby, the American hog peanut which has edible seeds I hope to try this year. https://pfaf.org/user/plant.aspx?latinname=Amphicarpaea+bracteata#:~:text=They%20can%20be%20harvested%20throughout,beans%20than%20peanuts%5B183%5D
Tiny Life Journal - In my woodland garden, two of my favorite native wildflowers: Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan. Growing nearby, the American hog peanut which has edible seeds I hope to try this year.
When a recognized animal like the polar bear goes extinct, that will get some attention. And yes, the polar bears will go extinct. If you think otherwise you're living in a delusion about where we are in this #ClimateEmergency. This is happening right now. Extinctions are happening now. We won't be waving a magic wand to wind back the clock.
"The loss of the only known stand of Key Largo tree cactus in the U.S. shows how rising seas can alter the coastal environment. "
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/09/sea-level-rise-wipes-out-an-entire-us-species
Sadly this won’t register as a problem for most people.
When a recognized animal like the polar bear goes extinct, that will get some attention. And yes, the polar bears will go extinct. If you think otherwise you’re living in a delusion about where we are in timeline of this climate emergency. This is happening right now. Extinctions are happening now.
Sea level rise wipes out a U.S. species for the first known time
The loss of the only known stand of Key Largo tree cactus in the U.S. shows how rising seas can alter the coastal environment.
Researchers Estimate True Gaza Death Toll at 186,000 | Truthout
Public health experts have estimated that the true death toll in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza could be five times higher than the official toll reported by Palestinian officials — a chilling figure that they say is, in fact, a conservative estimate based on historical death tolls in times of conflict.
In a letter published on Friday in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, the researchers said that the current death toll in Gaza could be 186,000 or more. This amounts to roughly 8 percent of Gaza’s population before October.
Tiny Life Journal - A morning dog walk is the start of my day. One mile on a gravel road that takes me through a mixed ecosystem of woodland, open fields and small meadows. A visual and aural mix of birds, butterflies, flowers and more. It’s simple, quiet and beautiful.
Images: Prairie blazing star in a field of grasses, trees and flowers. A dew covered, wild petunia.
#ClimateDiary #Nature #Walking
Tiny Life Journal - A morning dog walk is the start of my day. One mile on a gravel road that takes me through a mixed ecosystem of woodland, open fields and small meadows. A visual and aural mix of birds, butterflies, flowers and more. It’s simple, quiet and beautiful.
Tiny Life Journal - How I’m surviving summer without taking a flight in service of a vacation:
I understand that long distance vacations are a luxury and not a necessity of life. I choose to respect my fellow humans and the other species of the planet rather than shit on them.
Tiny Life Journal - How I’m surviving summer without taking a flight in service of a vacation:
I understand that long distance vacations are a luxury and not a necessity of life. I choose to respect my fellow humans and the other species of the planet rather than shit on them.
Equally predictable: the 10% of the Global North will keep on flying to vacations, driving SUVs without concern and otherwise carry on as though there is no problem and nothing they can do.
Earth sees warmest June on record, boosts odds of warmest year
June was the warmest such month on record worldwide, according to figures released Monday, extending a heat streak even longer.
The monthly milestone increases the odds that 2024 will eclipse 2023 as the warmest year on record, and adds to the consecutive months that exceeded the crucial 1.5°C threshold in the Paris Agreement.
Pearls and Irritations have an excellent post about The Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison. The new book, a critique of neoliberalism as the ideological source of the myriad crises we now face.
The book argues passionately for urgent system change, away from the control currently exercised by profit makers, and the need to strengthen governance and how the economy operates, though expanded participatory democracy. This is a well written, quite brief book that deserves a wide readership by those of us concerned about the many crises that now threaten our human future.
The hard truth that needs to be confronted by America today: white nationalism is alive and thriving.. Erin Aubry Kaplan at the Los Angeles Times:
Here’s the hard truth of the last eight years: America leans at least as much toward white nationalism as it does toward democracy (and that’s being optimistic). Nobody says it out loud, on either side, which is obscuring the real shape of Showdown 2024.
The GOP cult is clearly racist and anti-equality but claims not to be, despite rapidly mounting evidence to the contrary.
How the 1990s broke politics - Vox
If you were to write the history of modern American conservatism, where would you start? Maybe somewhere in the 1930s just before WW2? Or maybe you begin with the Cold War and anti-communism?
Cases can be made for both of those entry points, but the early 1990s offer another fascinating moment in this history. While this wasn’t the beginning of any grand conservative movement, the period is, in retrospect, a revealing flashpoint. And if you’re looking for a precursor to the weird, scrambled politics of the present, it’s an excellent candidate.