Links

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/04/654107109/you-dont-have-to-pass-out-to-be-blackout-drunk
Oct. 4, 2018
You Don't Have To Pass Out To Be Blackout Drunk
A less confusing term might be "alcohol-induced amnesia." It can be total. Hours of experience and events can be totally missing from memory. Or it can be spotty. Either way, it can be hard to impossible for a bystander, or even the inebriated person, to know when it has happened.
Many people confuse the idea of a blackout with someone who's had so much to drink that they are unarousable — they're not awake and they don't know what's going on. That's not at all the case. A blackout is when you don't remember what happened. You can appear to be completely awake. An observer can't tell when someone is in the midst of not forming a memory.
The second common misconception is that having a blackout is characteristic of an alcohol use disorder more commonly called alcoholism — that you only have blackouts if you have an alcohol use disorder. And that's just not true.


https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2018-10-02-two-category-five-at-once-hurricane-walaka-typhoon-kong-rey?cm_ven=wu_videos?cm_ven=hp-slot-1
Oct. 1, 2018
Hurricane Walaka and Super Typhoon Kong-rey attained Category 5 strength in the Pacific Ocean on Monday, marking the first time in 13 years two storms of that intensity have roamed the tropics simultaneously.
Walaka was deemed a Category 5 by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center at 8 p.m. EDT Monday while it was well to the southwest of Hawaii. Kong-rey hit this top rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale a few hours later at 11 p.m. EDT Monday, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/03/rescued-slave-thought-to-have-lived-in-a-shed-in-cumbria-for-40-years
Oct. 3, 2018
Specialist officers have rescued a potential modern slavery victim who is believed to have lived in a six-foot shed for 40 years.
An investigation is under way after the 58-year-old British man was found in the wooden structure, which contained just a chair and soiled bedding, at a residential site north of Carlisle in Cumbria.
A 79-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of modern slavery offences, while the victim was taken to be medically examined and assessed by specialist trauma officers.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/03/kochs-conservative-patagonia-toilet-paper-interactive
Oct. 2018
You're funding the Koch brothers
The Koch brothers are planning to spend about $400m in the 2018 election cycle to advance their conservative and libertarian agenda, and are putting money behind 178 House candidates and 17 Senate candidates. Just one of the groups in their influence network, an advocacy outfit called Americans for Prosperity, has 500 paid staffers and nearly 3 million citizen activists nationwide.
The reason they can afford to do this is, in part, you. The Kochs own most of Koch Industries, an oil, gas and manufacturing behemoth with over 120,000 employees involved in the production of some unexpected consumer goods. Their interests are so multifarious, their reach so pervasive, that their organization has been branded the Kochtopus.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/sep/26/america-oligarchy-dominated-billionaires-big-money-series
America's super rich
Oct. 2018


{I have to say I see this in many of the Trump supporters I know personally.]
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/?utm_medium=social&utm_term=2018-10-03T20%3A43%3A10&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_source=facebook
Oct. 3, 2018
Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.


https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/27/17907312/warren-buffett-mark-zuckerberg-mark-cuban-frugal-billionaires
Sept. 27, 2018
The appealing myth of the frugal billionaire
People love stories about supposedly penny-pinching billionaires like Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg — even if they aren’t entirely true.
“I think wealthy people who care about feeling like they are morally worthy of their privilege and who want to be seen as normal are always using people like that as their foil,” Sherman said. “That’s something that they can say, ‘Well, we’re not that.’ By saying that, they’re often signaling, ‘Well, we’re wealthy, but we’re not the kind of wealthy that wants all the attention, that has this over-the-top taste.’ They sort of distance themselves from that.”
That also means downplaying their own spending habits. The families Sherman interviewed spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private school tuition, home renovations, and lavish family vacations each year, but most of them continued to classify their spending as normal.
What the simple dichotomy between good rich people and bad rich people obscures is that even if wealthy people aren’t spending as much money as they could be, they’re still spending far more money than the average person. Mark Zuckerberg may be known for his minimalist hoodie-and-T-shirt wardrobe, but those hoodies are made of cashmere and cost $2,000
Lauding the wealthy for their thriftiness is also a way of blaming people for their own poverty.
Increasingly, conversations about wealth have shifted from how the wealthy spend their money to whether they should have that much money to spend, and how they accumulated that wealth in the first place. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently called out Jeff Bezos for amassing more and more wealth while Amazon warehouse employees make so little that they qualify for public assistance.
Where some people see a frugal billionaire who should be emulated, Sanders and others see an unconscionable hoarding of a fortune built on the backs of underpaid employees.


https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/2018-arctic-sea-ice-ties-sixth-lowest-extent-record
Oct. 1, 2018
Arctic sea ice has likely reached its annual minimum for 2018, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Sea ice extent shrank to 1.77 million square miles (4.59 square kilometers) on September 19 and again on September 23. Since then, ice extent has grown again, signaling an end to the summer melt season.
While the 2018 ice extent was not as extreme as the record low set in September 2012, it tied both 2008 and 2010 for the sixth-lowest area since satellites began measuring sea ice nearly 40 years ago. The NSIDC reports that the 12 lowest Arctic sea ice minimums have all occurred in the last 12 years. This year's minimum also occurred nine days later than the normal date of September 14. 


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/climate-change-deforestation-global-warming-report
Oct. 4, 2018
The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels.
Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas. By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18% of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.