Hooray! It’s Friday! We made it! And we made this #NewstodonFriday thread too, with a dash of science, a soupçon of tech, the inevitable slug of politics, and a spoonful of sweet stories to make the medicine go down. All the newsrooms featured here are independent and have their own active fediverse accounts. Please follow them, click on the stories, boost them, subscribe, donate and otherwise support if you can.
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Redbox, the DVD rental box company, went kaput earlier last year, leaving more than 24,000 machines abandoned across the country. @404mediaco’s @jasonkoebler takes a look at the efforts to remove and dispose of them. “The unceremonious end of Redbox is a reminder of how much stuff we make and buy, and how, when companies fail to plan for end-of-life or go out of business, they often leave a bunch of devices that suddenly become e-waste behind,” he writes.
https://www.404media.co/the-redbox-removal-team/
#Redbox #Recycling #DVDs #Lifestyle #PopCulture #Technology #Tech #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
There is a way to allay that sense of helplessness you might be feeling. Psychologist Liza M. Hinchey says that kindness can be a force for change in the world and “serves as an antidote to hopelessness because unlike global-scale issues, these small acts are within individuals’ control.” She writes for @TheConversationUS about how connecting to people strengthens relationships and can lead to mutual understanding.
#Psychology #Kindness #Lifestyle #Relationships #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
A psychologist and human connection researcher explains how individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective.
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress sole authority over the federal budget, but in a 2023 campaign video, Donald Trump said he has a plan to circumvent that. @ProPublica looks at what would happen if Trump asserted a power to kill congressionally approved programs, the Nixon-era law he would be contravening, and how a similar power grab over military aid to Ukraine led to his first impeachment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-impoundment-appropriations-congress-budget
#USPolitics #DonaldTrump #TrumpAdministration #USConstitution #USCongress #News #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.
Christmas tree up? Stockings by the fire? Guys, it’s not even December yet! @thetyee’s Harrison Mooney has a theory on why this year, people seem “desperately festive.” It’s all about control. “If we can’t change the world, we change the world inside our homes,” he writes. “Christmas is perfect for that. Decoration and reorganization reduce stress. Same goes for sugary snacks, or a big glass of eggnog and rum. At Christmas, we look back on happier times and lean into long-held traditions. It’s a way to make the darkest days and darkest timeline bearable.”
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2024/11/28/Is-It-Christmas-Yet/
#Holidays #Christmas #Lifestyle #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
“Between 1946 and 1963, lab scientists knowingly exposed at least 1,073 servicemen, dockworkers, lab employees and others to potentially harmful radiation through war games, decontamination tests and medical studies,” @SFPublicPress says. Their investigations center on the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at San Francisco’s Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, but the lab was one of many across the country doing similar research. That makes it a demonstration of “the ways that people have been seen as disposable, to science or to the military,” said Lindsey Dillon, a University of California assistant professor.
#History @histodons #MilitaryHistory #HumanRights #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
“Meetings of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP) have become little more than talk shops where world leaders and climate activists fiddle while the globe burns,” writes Patrick Gathara. For @thecontinent, he looks back at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, where expectations for a political deal that would protect the Global South were sky high, yet the outcome was what Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping described as an “incineration pact.”
https://continent.substack.com/p/another-cop-another-incineration
#Africa #GlobalSouth #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #COP29 #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
People in jails are largely cut off from voter information and seldom exercise the right to vote because it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible.@bolts’s Alex Burness visited Genesee County jail in Flint, Michigan to see how activists and authorities there are encouraging election participation, but simultaneously providing inadequate living conditions and food, and blocking visits from families.
https://boltsmag.org/flint-michigan-jail-candidate-forums/
#Michigan #Prison #Incarceration #Voting #VotingRights #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The Taiwanese language doesn’t sound like Mandarin Chinese. “[It] originates deep from the belly, creating rumbling sonorous tones that remind me of my dad’s laughter or my mom calling me for dinner, ‘ki jia buan!’” writes Josephine Lee for @TexasObserver. She explains the wave of migration from Taiwan to Houston, Texas, in the 1970s and ‘80s, why it’s difficult to quantify how many Taiwanese people are in America, and how organizations are supporting Taiwan’s independence.
https://www.texasobserver.org/houston-hotbed-taiwanese-nationalism/
#Taiwan #Taiwanese #China #Houston #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The fashion industry is bad for the environment, built upon exploitative labor, and really only designed for a narrow (slim, able-bodied) group of people.
@damemagazine’s Nicole Froio talked to crafters who are documenting their process on social media to show followers how much time and effort goes into making clothes — and therefore what’s being sacrificed if they opt for fast fashion.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2024/11/26/can-diy-clothes-unravel-fast-fashions-climate-disasters/
#Fashion #Clothing #ClimateCrisis #FastFashion #Lifestyle #EthicalConsumption #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
When Helena Stark decided to crochet her own wedding dress two months before her ceremony, she knew it would be a time crunch. She planned to chronicle her exhausting journey on her TikTok account (@squish.and.co), where she creates crochet and knitting content for half a million followers. “Because I am the queen of making rational
One out of every four known animal species on Earth is a beetle. Entomologists are fascinated by what makes them so successful and diverse, one element of which is their shields. For
@thexylom, Carolyn Bernhardt reports on the tortoise beetle, a leaf-eating herbivore that makes its shield from its old exoskeleton, plus poop.
https://www.thexylom.com/post/for-tortoise-beetles-feculence-is-the-best-defense
#Entomology #Beetles #Insects #Science #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
And finally, we couldn’t help but reshare our @CultureDesk's post of this LitHub article in praise of reading and print. It has everything a person could need — references to Terry Pratchett, Carl Sagan, George Orwell and Sven Birkerts, and some extremely pithy writing of its own. "The ephemerality of the internet is attractive to entropy, for how much of what’s been written over the past few decades has all but vanished, our prodigious output a daily burning of the Library of Alexandria, while stone, papyrus, vellum, and paper can endure for centuries,” writes Ed Simon. “A printed book is a living animal with flesh of paper and ink of blood, so that compared to turning pages, mere scrolling is anemic.”
#Writing #Literature #Books @bookstodon #TerryPratchett #CarlSagan #GeorgeOrwell #SvenBirkerts #Culture
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