Today in Labor History December 3, 1984: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killed over 3,800 people and injured up to 600,000 more. Up to 16,000 people died, in total, over the years following the disaster. The Government of Madhya Pradesh has paid compensation to family members of 3,787 of the victims killed. Numerous local activist groups emerged to support the victims of the disaster, like Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, who won the Goldman Prize in 2004. Many of the activists were subjected to violent repression by the police and government. Larger international groups, like Greenpeace and Pesticide Action Network also got involved. The disaster has played a role in numerous works of fiction, including Arundhati Roy’s “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” (2017) and Indra Sinha’s “Animal’s People” (2007). It has also been referenced in music by the Revolting Cocks “Union Carbide” and the Dog Faced Hermans ”Bhopal.”
@MikeDunnAuthor
I remember well that insurance companies executives rushed to have the family of deceased or injured victims, and signing a settlement agreement of a few hundred $, a huge amount for those people, preventing them from suing the company after that and obtaining the thousands and ten of thousands of $ they might have claimed and would have no doubt obtained.
Was a teenager then and I remember seing these obnoxious people as a pack of hyenas.
They would have a bonus of many thousands of $ for each settlement they had those illiterate victims signed.
I think they should continue burying seeds. Why have an need date? New seeds can selected base upon knowledge gained from previous parts of the experiment.
Additionally seeds that have genetically modified or any other modifications not available at the start of the experiment could be tested.
Tomorrow, I will play around with the notion of stand-ins, a project that might become my habilitation and a book. But I still feel it's a risky bet. Well, let's see. 👇
> I will draw on multi-sited ethnographic research to explore what it means to stay in limbo or move forward to becoming more or less relevant in global economies, amid energy transitions.
study suggest 45% of the world's flowering plants could go extinct.
"When we consider that nine out of ten of our medicines come from our plants, what we are potentially staring down the barrel at is losing half of all of our future medicines."
@michael@plants I hate to be that person but the image is of a Larix which is a gymnosperm. So many flowering plant species out there and they chose one that isn’t. That’s a cone.
Black Mountain (ACT) orchids - Dusky Fingers, Waxlips and Brown Caps out in one spot, but not much out at all in others (although I only had a quick look!) Canberra has had pretty much exactly the average rainfall for this calendar year so far - but local bush land and forests still felt a little drier than most really good orchid seasons. Might have to wait until the montane species start to flower later in spring / early summer now to put a lot of time into looking for Canberra orchids.
Really happy to share that I passed my PhD viva today! 🥳
I studied eavesdropping on speech in wild carrion crows in the UK, you can read the main paper here:
animalbehaviorandcognition.org/article.php?id=1348
@sabrinaschalz@academicchatter@phdstudents Did you by any chance hear one of them asking another one "Where shall we gang and dine the day-o?" It's well documented that they do that sometimes.
@michael@faassen@plants This would require work on your part, but not very much work: in iNaturalist, find a plant-oriented project in your vicinity, then look for the “most observed species” and, at the bottom of that column, click “view all.”
What you’ll get is a listing of species observed, by number of observations. Print the first page or two and make flash cards. Voila! #iNaturalist
@ClimateJenny@faassen@plants thanks and good points. i might be able to leverage their data. but what i really want are digital and physical flashcards that i can learn from.
I need to seriously reduce my time looking at screens, my eyes are virtually hurting.
What are your favourite podcasts? A bit nerdy, informative, deep dives, tech, ecology, queerfeminist discussions, Asia-Pacific.
I'm thinking in the lines of Cultures of Energy, @mel_hogan Data Fix, @parismarx Tech won't Safe Us, @emergencemagazine, Wohlstand für Alle, You're Wrong About, ... but also some format I do not have on my radar. @sts@academicchatter
Around 2,000 penguins wash up dead on Uruguay coast: Around 2,000 penguins have appeared dead on the coast of eastern Uruguay in the last 10 days, and the cause, which does not appear to be avian influenza, remains a mystery, authorities said. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-penguins-dead-uruguay-coast.html
"Exhibitions of art about ecology have been sprouting up everywhere, usually operating under some premise of ‘raising awareness’ for the climate crisis".
"Given the current state of ecological degradation, perhaps it’s time for a more concerted effort towards action. There are certainly limitations to this approach, particularly within the gallery space, which can’t house sheep to be shepherded, but perhaps it’s more a question of a shift in emphasis, towards practices that combine art and activism and actively engage the viewer. Does this necessitate a fundamental shift in how we define art? Yes. But in times like this such rules are made to be broken".
@Barros_heritage@sociology@ecology@academicchatter I would say that eco art exhibitions are actually pretty great but you can't just raise awareness and leave it at that. Every single art exhibit in this vein should have concrete actionable items (MULTIPLE) that viewers can immediately act on while inspired. These actions should be curated to fit the theme also.