A Global #FoodCrisis is Coming - And We Need to Prepare
This really is a great video. Covers all the important issues affecting #food availability in detail. Worth watching all 26 minutes.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2WxoEnax8ig&si=KoYGzXjwPgpRadaP #climate #LandUse #agriculture #AnimalAgriculture #emissions #pollution #GoVegan #vegan
There is a closing 20-year window in which decisions on climate and land use will determine the fate of dozens of native birds, butterflies and plants across Great Britain, which is already one of the most nature-depleted countries globally.
Press release from CEH https://www.ceh.ac.uk/press/we-have-just-20-years-stop-spiralling-decline-british-biodiversity
There is a closing 20-year window in which decisions on climate and land use will determine the fate of dozens of native birds, butterflies and plants across Great Britain, says a new study led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
Travelers Claim Land Adjacent to Actor's Estate for New Venture
Land next to Martin Clunes's Dorset home, previously a traveler site, is now planned for an SAS survival school. See how this impacts local residents.
#DorsetSAS, #SurvivalSchool, #MartinClunes, #LandUse, #LocalNews
The land next to Martin Clunes's home will now be used for an SAS survival school, a big change from its previous use as a traveler site.
#DorsetSAS, #SurvivalSchool, #MartinClunes, #LandUse, #LocalNews
https://newsletter.tf/dorset-land-sold-sas-survival-school/
America’s top drone development zones
The list provided identifies the top metropolitan areas across the United States where significant amounts of drone (civilian and military) research, development, and manufacturing are taking place. It also includes the headquarters locations for those entities. Despite often being associated with military use, drones can have many useful peacetime functions such as but not limited to: aerial inspections, aerial and thermal imagery, agricultural spray application, mapping/surveying, product delivery, site security, public safety, search & rescue (SAR), environmental monitoring, and disaster response/reconnaissance.
Autel Robotics thermal imaging search and rescue drone – Source: autelrobotics.comThe list does not distinguish between types or value of the drones produced, their raw numbers, nor the numbers employed by the industry. It only provides a list of organizations located there that are actively involved in drone research and development. To make the list as complete as possible, sources of counter/anti-drone product development are also included.
Northrup Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton Dron – Source: en.wikipedia.orgAs can be seen by the list, there are a number of metropolitan areas that have become significant zones for drone development. Greater Washington, D.C. tends to be where many military drone manufacturers are headquartered in order to be close to the decision makers are located.
AeroVironmental Quantix drone – Source: thestreet.comSeparately, several long-standing military-focused cities have become drone nodes as well — San Diego, Hampton Roads, and Albuquerque-Santa Fe fall into this category. Then, there are the well-known high-technology hubs that have naturally morphed into drone development. These include Boston, Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area (which could easily be combined with Silicon Valley), Seattle, and Portland (OR).
Seattle, Los Angeles, and Wichita all fall into another category – aircraft manufacturing cities that have expanded into drone zones. Meanwhile the Houston, Huntsville, Orlando-Melbourne, Los Angeles, and El Paso-Las Cruces metropolitan areas fall into the outer space specialization grouping. Transitioning from either of these manufacturing ecosystems to drones would be a logical step.
And lastly, there are the unexpected notable drone zones — Reno, Detroit, and of all places, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Detroit is an historic hub for automation and engine technologies and its economy encompasses a surprising amount of defense industries, while the State of Nevada has been investing in ways to make the Reno-Sparks area a competitive player in the drone industry.
Source: Facebook.comGrand Forks, North Dakota deserves significant accolades for its forward-thinking step of establishing the nation’s first drone research, development, and testing park (GrandSKY) at Grand Forks U.S. Air Force Base back in the mid-2010s. The extent of the drone zone in Grand Forks has led to the area being nicknamed “Silidrone Valley.”
More information on each of the drone zones is provided below. As always, any additions, suggestions, or corrections to the list are most welcome.
Peace!
_______
Definitions:
_______
Albuquerque-Santa Fe, New Mexico
THOR high-power microwave directed energy weapon – Source: twz.com_______
Boston Region
_______
Detroit-Ann Arbor, Michigan
_______
El Paso-Las Cruces, Texas/New Mexico
_______
Grand Forks, North Dakota “Silidrone Valley”
Source: faa.gov_______
Hampton Roads, Virginia
_______
Houston, Texas
_______
Huntsville, Alabama
_______
Los Angeles Region “Space Beach”
_______
Orlando-Melbourne, Florida Region “Space Coast”
_______
Phoenix, Arizona
_______
Portland-Vancouver, Oregon-Washington
_______
Reno-Sparks, Nevada
_______
San Diego, California
_______
San Francisco Bay Area, California
_______
Seattle-Tacoma, Washington
_______
“Silicon Valley”, California
_______
Washington, DC Region
_______
Wichita, Kansas
AgEagle Drone – Source: Directindustry.comSOURCES:
“The enclosure of the commons inaugurates a new ecological order. Enclosure did not just physically transfer the control over grasslands from the peasants to the lord. It marked a radical change in the attitudes of society toward the environment.”*…
The Gleaners by Jean-Francois Millet (1857)Several days ago, juries in New Mexico and California found Facebook/Meta (and in California, also YouTube/Google) guilty of knowingly employing algorithms to serve content to minors that caused depression, anxiety, and other mental health harms… behavior par for the course of the (massive, “mechanical”) extractive behavior that is their business model. As NPR reports (on the California verdict):
While the financial punishment is miniscule for companies each worth trillions of dollars, the decision is still consequential. It represents the first time a jury has found that social media apps should be treated as defective products for being engineered to exploit the developing brains of kids and teenagers… The outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against the social media companies. The litigation has drawn comparisons to the legal crusade in the 1990s against Big Tobacco, which forced the industry to to stop targeting minors with advertising…
L. M. Sacasas draws on a comparison to the English “enclosure movement” (and here) to put the stakes of this battle against algorithmic extraction into historical context…
If you were to ask me something like “What’s the most urgent task before us?” or “What counsel do you have to offer in this cultural moment?” I would say this:
Resist the enclosure of the human psyche.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m sure there are other necessary and urgent tasks. But this would be my contribution to the conversation. I would be offering not only an imperative to pursue, but also, and perhaps more importantly, an analogy to clarify and interpret the techno-economic forces at play in a digitized society. Such analogies or concepts can be useful. They can crystalize a certain understanding of the world and catalyze action and resolve. They can be a rallying cry.
In any case, I’ll say it again: resist the enclosure of the human psyche.
Some of you may immediately intuit the force of the analogy, but I suspect it needs a little unpacking.
Here’s the short version: I’m drawing an analogy between a historical development known as the enclosure of the commons and the condition of the human psyche in the context of a digitized society. The enclosure of the commons is the name given to the centuries-long process by which lands available to the many were turned into a resource to be managed and extracted by the few. My claim is that structurally similar processes are unfolding with the aim of enclosing the human psyche and transforming it into a resource to be managed and extracted…
The longer version, which follows, unpacks that analogy and explains what the impact of “enclosing the human psyche” could– would likely– be. Sacasas concludes…
… The individual human psyche does not seem like a thing held in common. But, in fact, that presumption may itself be a symptom of the enclosure of the psyche, although there are certainly many other forces leading toward that same conclusion. What if the psyche were a thing held in common? That is to say, what if our purchase on reality and the emergence of the self depended on human relationships and communities? From this perspective, the enclosure of the human psyche deprives us of a common world, which yields an experience of solidarity and belonging.
I’ve elsewhere developed this point at greater length, but here I’ll only note Hannah Arendt’s warning that we are deprived of a “truly human life” when we are “deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by others, to be deprived of an ‘objective’ relationship with them that comes from being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common world of things.”
That last bit about a common world of things, a material, not only virtual world, is key. The logic of enclosure seeks to lock us into a private virtual world of “bespoke realities,” thus excluding us from the common world of things that yields as well a public consciousness. As Arendt put it, “Only the experience of sharing a common human world with others who look at it from different perspectives can enable us to see reality in the round and to develop a shared common sense.”…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Enclosure of the Human Psyche“
* Ivan Illich, “Silence is a commons” in In the Mirror of the Past (to which Sacasas alludes in the essay linked above)
###
As we cosset commons, we might recall that it was on this date in 1867 that a bilateral treaty was signed effecting the sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States. It was ratified on May15 and American sovereignty took effect on October 18 of that year. The price for the 586,412 square miles that changed hands was $7.2 million in 1867 (equivalent to about $132 million in 2024), or about $0.02 per acre ($0.37 per acre in 2024).
Relevantly to the piece above, the land was and is largely commonly held, by the federal government, by the state, and by Native American tribes. Only roughly 1% of Alaska is in private hands. But that sliver is growing as the Trump Administration moves to “liquidate” federal real estate holdings (sell them to private owners) and in the meantime, licenses huge swathes of Alaska for oil and gas development, mineral extraction, and the infrastrucutre (roads, pipelines) needed to service them. Alaskans are worried.
The $7.2 million check used to pay for Alaska (source) #access #Alaska #AlaskaPurchase #commons #culture #enclosure #enclosureMovement #history #humanPsyche #LMSacasas #land #landAccess #landOwnership #landUse #ownership #politics #psyche #Russia
Richard Ashwell
Amy Roberts
CBC North
NewsletterTF
Richard Michael Blaber
Panethos
(Roughly) Daily
Alexander J. Stein