"We analyze the average sonority of basic words of nearly three-quarters of the world’s languages, and confirm a positive correlation between sonority and local temperature. Our findings suggest that lower temperatures, over the course of many centuries, lead to decreased sonority. Our research provides further evidence that climate plays a role in shaping the evolution of human languages."
Brazil has proposed a new $250 billion mechanism for conserving the world’s tropical rainforests.
The “Tropical Forests Forever” fund, sourced from governments and the private sector, would disburse money to tropical countries that achieve set thresholds for limiting deforestation.
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.
Delio de Jesús Suárez Gómez, a member of the Indigenous Tucano community in Colombia, is combining ancestral knowledge with science to help pollinating bees survive the harsh conditions of life in the rainforest.
In return, the bees provide honey for families, which is sold, and boosts the communities’ food and fruit supply through pollination.
Warfare in a Fragile World:
Military Impact on the Human Environment
This book, first published in 1980, examines the extent to which warfare and other military activities contribute to environmental degradation. The military capability to damage the environment has escalated. The military use and abuse of each of the several major global habitats – temperate, tropical, desert, arctic, insular and oceanic – are evaluated.
Conservationist and photographer Scott Trageser has developed a 3D scanning system that could potentially reshape how animals are studied in the wild.
The system uses an array of cameras that work in sync to rapidly capture photos of animals in the wild, yielding a virtual 3D specimen viewable on smartphone or with a VR/AR headset.
these lima beans are so amazing that you don't even have to work to open the pod! as they dry on the vine, the pods split open. you literally just reach in there and grab this amazing, delicious, nutritious, and beautiful food.
plants make it so easy for us and yet humans have made it so hard to live.... 😖
"Like many beans, raw lima beans are toxic (containing e.g. phytohaemagglutinin) if not boiled for at least 10 minutes. However, canned beans can be eaten without having to be boiled first, as they are pre-cooked.
"The lima bean can contain anti-nutrients.... These inhibit absorption of nutrients... and can cause damage to some organs. ...roasting, pressure cooking, soaking, and germination can also reduce the antinutrients significantly."
Nature's Warnings: Classic Stories of Eco-Science Fiction
This volume explores a range of prescient and thoughtful stories from SF’s classic period, from accounts of exhausted resources and ecocatastrophe to pertinent warnings of ecosystems thrown off balance and puzzles of adaptation and responsibility as humanity ventures into the new environments of the future.
@appassionato@bookstodon 'The Man Who Awoke' remains one of my all-time favourite books. To think, Manning foresaw all these revolutions so long in the past.
And funny that it could fit just as easily in your previous toot, Menace of the Machine.
Yadav Ghimirey, one of the pioneering clouded leopard researchers in Nepal, shares his challenges and achievements of conducting camera trap surveys, scat analysis and pelt identification of the elusive clouded leopards in different regions of Nepal, where they are very rare and poorly understood.
Next week's @universityofgalway history research seminar features Dr Eavan O'Dochartaigh on 'Tracing and Returning a Greenlandic Woman through the Archives of Exploration'. In-person in Room G010, Hardiman Building, at 4.00pm, 8 November. For the Zoom link, register at https://forms.office.com/e/Ezy9tXU45H
@universityofgalway@histodons POSTPONED - Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, this seminar has been postponed. We hope to re-schedule the talk at a later date.
I'm looking for literature on the relationship between concepts of 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' and local practices in the Global South and/or indigenous communities in the Global North (e.g. First Nations).
Specifically, I'd like to know how 'sustainability' is defined; what forms of knowledge are privileged; and how local practices are described by outsiders (& vice versa).
Our capitalist rulers, and the politicians they own, are playing the long game. Since the 1950s they have been working steadily to shift the Overton window, to reduce the influence of labor unions, to boost consumerism, and to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
A large part of that strategy involves privatizing services that used to be (and should be) public.
They're playing the long game, and they are winning — much to the detriment of you and me and the environment we live in.