Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam

What will actually happen when the so-called ‘Doomsday Glacier’ disintegrates?

Has the word ‘doomsday’ lost all meaning?

Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov
Ice entering the ocean might look like this. Credit: Getty / Posnov

As many climate change activists are pointing out lately, the “doomsday” implied in the term “Doomsday Glacier” — the nickname given to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica — may be coming soon. But what will that day actually be like?

As noted in a scary new paper in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team led by geological oceanographer Alastair G. C. Graham, the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica may be closer to a major disintegration event than previously thought.

Here’s what’s new in our understanding of this situation: This new study involved analyzing ridges on the sea floor. These rib-like formations reveal strong evidence of the glacier’s location for centuries as the tide nudged it each day. This is different from previously gathered data about the glacier, which was pulled from satellite maps of the ice as it edges further and further toward a total (or near total) collapse into the ocean,

LINK TO ARTICLE

STARK: How the Rich Destroy Democracy and Cause Collapse

STARK: How the Rich Destroy Democracy and Cause CollapseIn this episode, I interview political commentator, former congressional candidate, and now regenerative farmer Haven Scott McVarish, author of LAST CHANCE TO SAVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. Haven talks about his favorite novel, STARK by Ben Elton, a dystopian comedy thriller about how corporations and the wealthy cause a global ecological collapse. Haven also discusses the novel’s themes in relation to his own book about the current, ongoing collapse of U.S. democracy. We talk about how to save our imperiled democracy as well as what ordinary people can start doing now to prepare for collapse via local community building and restorative agriculture.

LINKS:

https://thisistheend.net/e/stark-how-the-rich-destroy-democracy-and-cause-collapse/

Last Chance to Save American Democracy by Haven Scott McVarish https://amzn.to/3eqPxxB
Stark by Ben Elton https://amzn.to/3wY6dD2
5 Journeys (Haven Scott McVarish’s non-profit organization) https://www.5journeys.org/

World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds

Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change

The collapse of the Greenland ice cap is one of the tipping points that may already have been passed. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/Getty Images
The collapse of the Greenland ice cap is one of the tipping points that may already have been passed. Photograph: Ulrik Pedersen/Getty Images

The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study.

It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.

LINK TO ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds

Suitcase nuclear device

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM
H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM

A suitcase nuclear device (also suitcase nuke, suitcase bomb, backpack nuke, snuke, mini-nuke, and pocket nuke) is a tactical nuclear weapon that is portable enough that it could use a suitcase as its delivery method.

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM
Both the United States and the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons small enough to be portable in specially-designed backpacks during the 1950s and 1960s.[1][2]

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union have ever made public the existence or development of weapons small enough to fit into a normal-sized suitcase or briefcase.[3] The W48 however, does fit the criteria of small, easily disguised, and portable. Its explosive yield was extremely small for a nuclear weapon.[4][5]

In the mid-1970s, debate shifted from the possibility of developing such a device for the military to concerns over its possible use in nuclear terrorism.[6] The concept became a staple of the spy thriller genre in the later Cold War era.[7]

More: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device

A ‘doomsday glacier’ the size of Florida is disintegrating faster than thought

Thwaites Glacier, known as the “doomsday glacier” for the risk it poses to global sea levels, is retreating faster than previously thought, study shows

The U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer working along the ice edge of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in February 2019. (Courtesy of Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg) Listen 3 min
The U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer working along the ice edge of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in February 2019. (Courtesy of Alexandra Mazur/University of Gothenburg

A large glacier in Antarctica that could raise sea levels several feet is disintegrating faster than last predicted, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Thwaites Glacier — dubbed the “doomsday glacier” because scientists estimate that without it and its supporting ice shelves, sea levels could rise more than 3 to 10 feet — lies in the western part of the continent. After recently mapping it in high-resolution, a group of international researchers found that the glacial expanse experienced a phase of “rapid retreat” sometime in the past two centuries — over a duration of less than six months.

READ ARTICLE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/06/thwaites-doomsday-glacier-antarctica-disintegrating/

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
Time to bunker down… if you’ve got the cash. Photograph: Terravivos/Observer Design

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

 

Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)

Too drastic, too crazy, too “out there,” too early, too late, too damaged, too much—Valerie Solanas has been dismissed but never forgotten. She has become, unwittingly, a figurehead for women’s unexpressed rage, and stands at the center of many worlds. She inhabited Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, circulated among feminists and the countercultural underground, charged men money for conversation, despised “daddy’s girls,” and outlined a vision for radical gender dystopia.

Known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968 and for writing the polemical diatribe SCUM Manifesto, Solanas is one of the most famous women of her era. SCUM Manifesto—which predicted ATMs, test-tube babies, the Internet, and artificial insemination long before they existed—has sold more copies, and has been translated into more languages, than nearly all other feminist texts of its time.

Shockingly little work has interrogated Solanas’s life. This book is the first biography about Solanas, including original interviews with family, friends (and enemies), and numerous living Warhol associates. It reveals surprising details about her life: the children nearly no one knew she had, her drive for control over her own writing and copyright, and her elusive personal and professional relationships.

Valerie Solanas addresses how this era changed the world and depicts an iconic figure whose life is at once tragic and remarkable.

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If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity

If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity

Author(s): Justin Gregg

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, Year: 2022

ISBN: 0316388068,9780316388061

Search in WorldCat | Search in Goodreads | Search in AbeBooks | Search in Amazon.com

http://library.lol/main/BE0C449BC9903F4F9CA856D7B8C7367D

Description:
“A dazzling, delightful read on what animal cognition can teach us about our own mental shortcomings.”
– Adam Grant

“Undeniably entertaining”
– The New York Times

This funny, “extraordinary and thought-provoking” (The Wall Street Journal) book asks whether we are in fact the superior species. As it turns out, the truth is stranger—and far more interesting—than we have been led to believe.

If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal overturns everything we thought we knew about human intelligence, and asks the question: would humans be better off as narwhals? Or some other, less brainy species? There’s a good argument to be made that humans might be a less successful animal species precisely because of our amazing, complex intelligence.

All our unique gifts like language, math, and science do not make us happier or more “successful” (evolutionarily speaking) than other species. Our intelligence allowed us to split the atom, but we’ve harnessed that knowledge to make machines of war. We are uniquely susceptible to bullshit (though, cuttlefish may be the best liars in the animal kingdom); our bizarre obsession with lawns has contributed to the growing threat of climate change; we are sexually diverse like many species yet stand apart as homophobic; and discriminate among our own as if its natural, which it certainly is not. Is our intelligence more of a curse than a gift?

As scientist Justin Gregg persuasively argues, there’s an evolutionary reason why human intelligence isn’t more prevalent in the animal kingdom. Simply put, non-human animals don’t need it to be successful. And, miraculously, their success arrives without the added baggage of destroying themselves and the planet in the process.

In seven mind-bending and hilarious chapters, Gregg highlights one feature seemingly unique to humans—our use of language, our rationality, our moral systems, our so-called sophisticated consciousness—and compares it to our animal brethren. Along the way, remarkable tales of animal smarts emerge, as you’ll discover:

The house cat who’s better at picking winning stocks than actual fund managers
Elephants who love to drink
Pigeons who are better than radiologists at spotting cancerous tissue
Bumblebees who are geniuses at teaching each other soccer

What emerges is both demystifying and remarkable, and will change how you look at animals, humans, and the meaning of life itself.

 

The Zen Buddhist Philosophy of D.T. Suzuki with Rossa Ó Muireartaigh

Rossa Ó Muireartaigh is currently Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Studies, Aichi Prefectural University, Japan. In this episode we discuss his book – The Zen Buddhist Philosophy of D. T. Suzuki: Strengths, Foibles, Intrigues, and Precision, alongside discussions on language, time, free will, and more…