Links

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/17/17832948/youtube-youtubers-influencer-creator-fans-subscribers-friends-celebrities
Sept. 17, 2018
the ever-expanding social phenomenon of parasocial relationships, wherein individuals attach affections to celebrity figures. The concept is more accurate than ever today, and it’s crucial to understanding the complications of life as an influencer or creator in 2018.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45611403
Sept. 22, 2018
Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a Republican from the party's most conservative wing, is standing for re-election in November.
Fearing for the future, his siblings have thrown their weight behind their choice of candidate in a powerful new TV advert.
The striking part? It's not their brother.
Nope - six of Mr Gosar's siblings have spoken out to endorse his rival, Democrat David Brill.
"It would be difficult to see my brother as anything but a racist," Grace Gosar says


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-sexually-assaulted-heres-why-i-dont-remember-many-of-the-details/2018/09/21/8ce0088c-bdab-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cdef9fe80766
Sept. 21, 2018
By Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, about being sexually assaulted about 40 years ago:
I never told anyone for decades — not a friend, not a boyfriend, not a therapist, not my husband when I got married years later.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that for more than 30 years, Christine Blasey Ford didn’t talk about the assault she remembers, the one she accuses Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of committing.
It’s important to understand how memory works in a traumatic event. Ford has been criticized for the things she doesn’t remember, like the address where she says the assault happened, or the time of year, or whose house it was. But her memory of the attack itself is vivid and detailed. His hand over her mouth, another young man piling on, her fear that maybe she’d die there, unable to breathe. That’s what happens: Your memory snaps photos of the details that will haunt you forever, that will change your life and live under your skin. It blacks out other parts of the story that really don’t matter much.


https://www.space.com/41912-japanese-hopping-rovers-land-on-asteroid.html
Sept. 21, 2018
Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu — and they've even sent back some wild postcards from their new home.
The tiny rovers are part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission. Engineers with the agency deployed the robots early Friday (Sept. 21), but JAXA waited until today (Sept. 22) to confirm the operation was successful and both rovers made the landing safely.


http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/strongest-tropical-cyclones-by-region
Sept. 12, 2018
Tropical cyclones, the more general term for hurricanes globally, have been setting records in the last few years. In a warming climate, the most intense of these storms are getting stronger, and some of the strongest on record have been seen in the last decade.
Defined by wind speed, last year’s Hurricane Irma was the strongest storm on record in the Atlantic basin outside of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and just three years ago, Hurricane Patricia became the eastern Pacific’s strongest storm on record with a maximum sustained wind of 215 mph.
While there are multiple conditions necessary for hurricanes to form, the energy that sustains these storms comes from the warm ocean water. More than 90 percent of the warming from human-induced climate change has gone into the global oceans, raising water temperatures 2°-4°F over the past century. That has translated to warming in the tropical Atlantic and along the U.S. coasts.
As warming of the climate system continues, an increase in the number of tropical cyclones each year is not necessarily expected, but their impacts will be magnified. Studies have shown that climate change enhanced the rain totals from Hurricane Harvey last year, and rising seas drove the storm surge from Sandy farther inland in 2012. With sea levels projected to rise at least a few more feet by the end of the century, storm surge will push even farther inland, affecting more people and doing more damage.


https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20092018/hurricane-florence-solar-panel-energy-resilience-extreme-weather-damage-wind-flooding
Sept. 20, 2018
Faced with Hurricane Florence's powerful winds and record rainfall, North Carolina's solar farms held up with only minimal damage while other parts of the electricity system failed, an outcome that solar advocates hope will help to steer the broader energy debate.
North Carolina has more solar power than any state other than California, much of it built in the two years since Hurricane Matthew hit the region. Before last week, the state hadn't seen how its growing solar developments—providing about 4.6 percent of the state's electricity—would fare in the face of a hurricane.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/us/hurricane-florence-new-bern-poor.html
Sept. 17, 2018
In Flood-Hit Public Housing, a Reminder That the Poor Bear Brunt of Storms’ Fury