Iceland is rising. Or, more precisely, the island’s “ice” part is shrinking, causing the “land” part to rebound from the Earth’s crust—a process that’s happening at a pace much faster than scientists had previously realized. In fact, its glaciers are melting so swiftly that parts of Iceland are rising as much as 1.4 inches (35mm) a year.
That’s according to research just published (paywall) by a team led by scientists from the University of Arizona. The study is the first to directly link the Earth’s accelerating uplift with global warming’s glacial thaw. As this process intensifies, the scientists warn, it risks upping the frequency of volcanic eruptions.
What’s new here isn’t the science itself, exactly. Glaciers are so heavy that they weigh down the earth that they cover. A while back, geologists discovered that where huge chunks of ice are thinning, the earth beneath them starts rebounding. And evidence suggests that higher latitudes are warming faster than the global average.
What scientists haven’t understood, though, is whether the ground’s bounce-back comes from glaciers that melted long ago—or whether this is due to recent climate change.
In Iceland, at least, global warming is the culprit, according to Richard Bennett, a UA associate professor of geosciences. He and his team figured this out by attaching GPS receivers to rocks all over Iceland, and then calculating how far the rocks traveled over time.
“What we’re observing is a climatically induced change in the Earth’s surface,” he says.
Even more worryingly, this change is happening way faster than previous research suggested. If melting continues at its current pace, by around 2025, some parts of Iceland will be rising at a rate of 15.7 inches a year.
There’s a literal downside to all of this—and it’s a big one. The thinning of the glaciers reduces the pressure on the rocks beneath, as Kathleen Compton, a UA geosciences doctoral candidate who led the research, told Time. the danger for Iceland is that high heat content at lower pressure creates conditions more likely to melt the rising mantle rocks—feeding more magma to volcano systems.
Bennett points out that the last time its glaciers got skimpy—about 12,000 years ago—Iceland’s volcanic activity leapt thirtyfold in some parts of the island.
Eyjafjallajökull’s 2010 eruption choked the atmosphere with so much volcanic ash that its plume grounded tens of thousands of global commercial airline flights each day.(IATA)
That’s grim news not just for Icelanders, but for everyone. In 2010, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull cost the global economy an estimated $5 billion. And while Bárðarbunga’s rumblings in August 2014 proved less eventful, it’s still erupting, and has set off another of the region’s volcanoes. More ominously still, the eruption of Laki in the 1780s killed a quarter of Iceland’s population, wiped out 23,000 Brits, set off famine in Egypt, and may have helped spark the French Revolution.
There are always at least two sides to every issue, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You may not like your opponents, you may not want to come to terms with them, but if you do not understand them, you will never defeat them. “Dehumanization vs. survival” is a black-and-white proposal that has no grounding in the real world.
I, who sent the tweet above, and whose blog this originates from, said my humanity is NOT fucking debatable. And this link below to my essay on anti-Blackness and “opinions” was on the original post.
My humanity is not debatable. I will not have nor entertain “multiple view points” about whether I am a human being who does not deserve the dehumanization of anti-Blackness and the ramifications of misogynoir and other intersecting oppressions.
And spare me the “if you do not understand them” line. See the archive. I understand bloody fucking well. The receipt trail on a hunnid.
I am not talking about “opponents.” You speak of the “real world” yet your point is completely grounded in theory and not the reality of oppression and the violence of oppressors. Oppression is why Black womanhood is “not real womanhood” and why Blackness is “not human.” This is not a goddamn high school debate exercise when Black bodies litter the streets, when our very citizenship and sentience itself are treated as question marks.
You think epistemic violence and casual disregard of humanity, as a debatable topic with “opponents” (which already implies a parity in structural power that does not exist; again, this is not a high school debate exercise) is “logic.” Heh. I can tell. But you are wrong. Because there is no “logical” reason why I would entertain dehumanization of Blackness as valid. Plenty of violently socialized ones, that again, my tweet rejects.
Don’t put this violent mess on my blog. If you think your response is “calm” and “rational” and “unbiased,” response, you are wrong. It is violent. Please leave me and my personal blog Gradient Lair blog alone.
"So its a great show for feminism, but because it fails to adress racial issues it should be ignored and made to fail"
I’m just… going to repeat the first line here, and let it sit: “So it’s a great show for feminism, but because it fails to address racial issues.”
Motherfucker, HOW can ANYTHING be “great for feminism” if it “fails to address racial issues”?
I hate to inform you of this but WOMEN. OF. COLOR. EXIST.
What kind of feminism are you practicing, exactly?
If something “fails to address racial issues” it is AUTOMATICALLY bad feminism, bad on gender issues, bad for women. You CANNOT have feminism without antiracism, because “women” are a racialized group, and women face racism.
Like, jesus christ.
I just… I’m so stunned by this assertion that something can be “great for feminism” while failing on racial issues. Great for whose feminism, exactly? For white women’s feminism? Because I’m not playing the “we’ll get to women of color EVENTUALLY” game. That’s not feminism.
That’s white supremacy.
(I mean, literally. It’s “white people come first, and THEN we’ll deal with people of color’s issues. It is LITERALLY white supremacy)
"(it just ignores them, it doesnt introduce and then kill POCs left and right - hi joss)"
Y’all out there who think it’s somehow better to IGNORE people of color than to fridge them - you realize that ERASING people of color is violence, right?
Ignoring black and brown bodies is violent because it’s the kind of discursive and aesthetic rhetoric that ALLOWS us as a nation to ignore black and brown bodies in our public policy. Because we never see black and brown people in our culture, they’re never made human for us. We’re given tacit permission to never give a shit about them, which is why we don’t give a shit when they’re *literally* murdered through economic and state-sanctioned violence.
It’s not “better” to ignore racial issues than it is to “introduce and kill POC.” Neither of them is “better.” They’re both racist, they’re both forms of white supremacist violence.
But hey, AT LEAST the actors of color in Joss Whedon’s shows are getting PAID.
"It should be ignored and made to fail."
You realize no one is actively trying to make Agent Carter fail, right?
What I’ve seen is people on tumblr saying that we MUST watch Agent Carter because it’s SUCH a good show on feminism and social justice, and so anyone who cares about those issues MUST watch it.
And at a bunch of other people are pointing out that ACTUALLY, Agent Carter isn’t all that great on feminism and social justice.
If your premise is that I should watch Agent Carter because it’s “great on feminism,” then it better be fucking great on feminism. And it’s not.
Me pointing that out isn’t me trying to “make it fail.” No one is organizing a boycott. No one is writing letters to the TV studios trying to get it off air. We’re just resisting the idea that it’s the second coming of Social Justice TV (tm).
I love that refusing to buy into the logic that a show MUST be great social justice because it has a white female protagonist means we’re attacking it, and want it to die with fire. Please.
"Because what Marvel and other producers will take away from this is not "oh female super heroes suck"? We will get another show with a dude instead."
The fact that the entertainment industry takes the failure of female-led shows as a sign that ALL female-led shows suck is not our fault. That phenomenon is a product of misogyny, not of feminist not trying hard enough to make Peggy Carter a success.
We are not responsible as individuals for magically changing an institutional problem.
And the flip-side of this is that Peggy Carter succeeding does not automatically mean more female superheroes will appear. I remember a couple years ago with Bridesmaids, everyone was like “oh, you have to see this, or we’ll never get smart female comedies again!”
And Bridesmaids did really well… and we didn’t suddenly get an influx of smart female-led, female-written comedies. Because *misogyny* is the problem.
I happen to know that Marvel did a study after the release of Avengers to see what people thought of the characters, and two highest rated characters were the Hulk and Black Widow.
Guess who HASN’T gotten a movie?
Yeah, because actually, Marvel DOESN’T always listen to the market. Marvel doesn’t always listen to the fans. Marvel doesn’t always do what would make the most money. A lot of the time, Marvel will IGNORE THE EVIDENCE, because institutional oppression is not magically solved by capitalism,
It’s not that we’re not trying hard enough to promote female characters. Misogyny is the problem.
So please stop this bullshit guilt-tripping of people because they’re not watching #SolidarityIsForWhiteAgents.
"I mean discuss it with the creaters, criticize it but watch the show. so it can get better."
Ah, yes, I will just pick up my cellular telephone and call up the creators, who are close personal friends of mine, and tell them to cast Dichen Lachman, Q’orianka Kilcher, John Cho and Derek Luke. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before! Racism solved.
I hate to burst your adorable innocent bubble, but people asking the entertainment industry to cast more people of color has not worked out very well so far.
Also, your logic is pretty classic abusive relationship logic. “Ah, yes, this show is terrible. But you must STAY WITH IT to make it better. ” Uh, no. No, I must not? The show is not going to get better because I watch it. It is not going to get better because it has higher ratings (if anything, that’ll convince the creators they’re doing something RIGHT). If I am not enjoying a show, for whatever reason, I am not obligated to stick around and “make it better” through the power of… osmosis, or something.
On a sidenote, I was totally planning to watch Agent Carter eventually, once grad school calmed down a bit. But defenders of the show trying to guilt trip people into watching it because it’s greatest thing for feminism since Margaret Sanger, and then responding to criticisms of the show’s supposed feminism with white supremacist logic of “it’s good for WOMEN and it’ll get better on people of color EVENTUALLY” is… really turning me off the idea.
If I ever needed more proof that Solidarity is For White Women, this discussion has been it.*
We live in a culture that produces girls’ tops with narrower shoulder straps than boys’ tops, girls’ shorts that expose more leg than boys’ shorts, and then shames girls for wearing the clothes sold to them. We live in a culture that tells boys it’s okay to shed clothing in the heat in order to be more comfortable, but tells girls that there comfort is secondary to how others perceive them.
[…]
The message that we are receiving isn’t just that more ‘revealing’ clothes are wrong. It’s that our female bodies are wrong. That by having breasts and hips and legs and exposing them, we are less.
Neon signs in Hong Kong are transformed into abstract linear forms in the clever photo series Eye Carry the Night by Spanish photographer Rainer Torrado. Torrado achieved the effect by photographing the signs from directly below.
Poetweet is a silly new promotional service from Brazilian cultural center b_arco that crawls a user’s Twitter feed in order to construct a sort of nonsensical cut-up poem from bits of tweets. Users enter a handle, choose from the sonnet, rondel, or indriso style and the web app goes to work. Once created, users can check out the source tweets by hovering over a line or share them via social networks.
Artist Sarah DeRemer has used a bit of digital manipulation to create freakish bird creatures with gaping mouths instead of beaks. She calls them, rather fittingly, “big mouth birds.” We previously posted about DeRemer’s wonderfully bizarre animal hybrids.
In this special episode dedicated to the hobby near and dear to our hearts, we’re excited that id Software’s own Tim Willits will be helping Adam and Jamie dig into an often-discussed topic of FPS games: Is it really possible for someone to carry all those health packs, guns, and even a chainsaw? Using the DOOM universe and DOOM 3 BFG Edition for reference, Tim helps the team recreate a DOOM level in real life.
The episode is scheduled to air on Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 9 PM ET.
If there were a video and accompanying story that could be used as a textbook example of every problem with our criminal justice system, this is it. First, watch the cruiser cam video (you only need watch from 1:40 to 7:40):
What the video shows is Wingate standing motionless at the crosswalk and Officer Whitlatch pulling over and immediately asking him to drop his weapon and then claiming that he swung it at her.
She then cautions him that the entire encounter is being recorded. Wingate stands there dumbfounded, like someone who never had any negative interactions with anybody:
Wingate is a 70-year-old Air Force veteran and retired King County Metro bus driver had a daily habit of walking and using a golf club like a cane, according to his attorney, Susan Mindenbergs.
In the police report filed by Officer Coles about the incident, Whitlatch said “she observed him look at her and aggressively swing his golf club in the direction of her patrol car.” “Because Wingate was still in possession of the golf club,” Coles wrote in the report, “and she was fearful of being assaulted by him, she said that she kept her distance from him upon exiting her patrol car.”
Facebook user Cynthia Whitlatch accuses Davis of being a “black racist” and writes, “If you believe that blacks are NOT accusing white America for their problems then you are missing the point of the riots in Ferguson and the chronic black racism that far exceeds any white racism in this country. I am tired of black peoples paranoia that white people are out to get them. I am tired of hearing a black racist tell me the only reason they are being contacted is because they are black solely because I am NOT black.”
in a police department that has had several concerns about systemic racism:
Officer Whitlatch is one of 123 police officers who sued the government last year, at both the federal and city level, to block the Department of Justice–ordered use of force policies. The SPD is under a federal consent decree and is being forced to address the DOJ’s concerns over racial bias and its finding that Seattle police routinely use excessive force.
And obviously a liar, as evidenced by the disconnect between her version and reality.
The police don’t seem to think that it has anything to do with race:
“They know that had this been a white man,” said [former Democratic Washington State representative Dawn Mason], “we wouldn’t be here.” But, in fact, it appears they don’t know that. The Seattle Police Department insists racial bias played no role in the incident.
“If this person had been white,” said SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb, speaking by phone on Tuesday, “I would imagine it would have been the same outcome. We don’t believe this was a biased policing incident. We don’t believe the officer acted out of malice or targeted this man because of his race.”
At the East Precinct, Mason said, they watched the video with Assistant Chief Nick Metz and East Precinct captain Pierre Davis.
But the police commanders, including Metz and Davis, didn’t see it that way. Mason said they “tried to convince me nothing was wrong.” Metz, in particular, “kept trying to convince us nothing was wrong here. He defended the officer.”
That Whitlatch’s “punishment” was a talking to:
Whitlatch has not been disciplined. “This did not go through the OPA process,” said SPD’s Whitcomb. “Basically, she was talked to by her supervisor.”
She has however, been removed from duty that involves interacting with others:
Seattle police chief Kathleen O’Toole said in a statement this afternoon that she feels “shocked and disappointed” at the way SPD officer Cynthia Whitlatch behaved on Facebook—tacitly confirming that a post-Ferguson Facebook screed about “chronic black racism” and “black people saying poor poor me” was, in fact, written by the same Officer Cynthia Whitlatch who arrested an elderly military vet last summer for “walking in Seattle while black.” Officer Whitlatch, O’Toole said, is now on administrative assignment, “where she will have no interaction with the public” while a “comprehensive review” of her behavior in this and other cases is completed (along with an independent investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability).
The system condones this behavior. Notice how, in the video, Whitlatch can be heard telling Wingate that it’s all recorded on audio and video. She’s not lying; it is. But she also has to know that the video tells a completely different version than hers. So why is she making that bold claim about the video? Because she knows that no one’s ever going to bother to see it. She knows that it’s a minor charge and the nuisance factor of it is enough to get someone to accept some sort of slap-on-the-wrist rather than spend months contesting what is essentially a minor infraction. She knows that she can get away with it because she’s a cop and what’s in the report will almost always be exclusively relied upon.
And she almost did get away with it:
The next day, prosecutors at the city attorney’s office decided to file a misdemeanor charge of unlawful use of a weapon against him, “based on the SPD incident report,” according to spokesperson Kimberly Mills.
“On that day,” she writes, “Mr. Wingate, who was represented by an attorney, agreed to enter into an agreement under which the case would be dismissed after two years if he complied with all conditions ordered by the Seattle Municipal Court judge.”
What the city attorney’s account of events leaves out, according to Mindenbergs, Wingate’s current attorney, is that the elderly man was told, “If you sign this stipulated order of continuance, it will all be over, basically.” She said her client followed a public defender’s instructions.
As a public defender, I think it’s entirely ineffective and completely defensible. Wingate must’ve been one of hundreds of clients that day. An elderly man accused of threatening a cop with a golf club; a man with no record who probably was just having a bad day. “Your word against the cop’s, Mr. Wingate. And they’re only offering you a deferred adjudication. Who knows if the dashcam even exists?”
And so Wingate pleads guilty. I call it guilt by convenience and that’s what happens when the nuisance value is high enough that people will pled to infractions and small offenses rather than spend the days, weeks, months litigating and fighting minor cases. Most people, believe it or not, don’t like to come to court. Wingate got lucky:
Weeks later, city prosecutors, after conferring with [Deputy Police Chief Carmen Best, who, like Wingate, is black] recommended dismissing both the case against him and the two-year stipulation.
But just imagine how many others there were on that same day, who were harassed, wrongfully accused, arrested and convicted just because an officer like Watlatch decided to flex her muscles.
Something that has not happened in a thousand years is happening.
You are going to the City. There is only one City. It is only said with a capital C. No one needs to bother saying the name of the City. It is the City.
Certain members of the Council are displeased with your family’s recent actions.
A bard is providing occasional comic relief; no one hired or invited him and his method of earning a living is unclear.
The High Priest is not to be trusted.
Someone is eating an apple mockingly.
There is one body of water. It is called the Sea. The Great Sea, if you are feeling fancy.
You live in a region with no major exports, no centralized government, no banking system, a mysteriously maintained network of roads, and little to no job training for anyone who is not a farmer.
You have red hair. You wear it in a braid. Your father was a simple man, and you don’t remember much about him – he died when you were so young – but you remember his strong hands, as he fished or carpentered or whatever it was that he used to do with them.
You’re going to have to hurry, or you’re going to miss the Fair – and you never miss the Fair.
There is trouble at the Citadel.
Your full name has at least one apostrophe in it.
It is the first page, and you are already late for something. Your mother affectionately chides you as you gulp down a few spoonfuls of porridge; she will be dead by page forty-two.
There are two religions in your entire universe. One is a thinly veiled version of Islam. It is only practiced by villains. The other is “being a Viking.” You are a Viking.
There are new ways in the land that threaten the Old Way. Your grandmother secretly practices the Old Way, as do all of the people of the hills.
The real trouble began the day you arrived at court. Every last nobleman hides a viper in his smile. How you long for the purity of life in your village, which is currently on fire or something.
A 65-year-old white Missouri man was arrested and charged with a hate crime after he reportedly used racial slurs toward a black waitress whom he also allegedly told, “I have a place I would like to take you where I hung your grandpa.”
Tommy Dean Gaa, of Maryville, reportedly told the waitress, after she asked if he wanted wheat or white toast, that he was prejudiced and therefore would take white toast, according to a probable cause statement viewed by the Maryville Daily Forum.
Gaa also allegedly grabbed the waitress’s arm so hard that it left a bruise and asked if she “liked to party.”
Gaa then allegedly said, “I have a place I would like to take you where I hung your grandpa.”
The waitress reportedly left the dining area and waited in the kitchen until the police arrived. According to police reports, Gaa initially denied making the remarks but dropped a few racial slurs in trying to explain his innocence. The newspaper notes that Gaa was released from the Nodaway County Jail on $4,900 bond.
Weather photographer Mike Hollingshead, whose impressive storm photography we first featured around this time last year, has taken his editing a bit further by importing his supercell thunderstorm photos into Photoshop and setting them in motion. Hollingshead says these animations aren’t created like more traditional cinemagraphs, where moving elements from a video are isolated and the rest of the image is masked out. Instead, he uses only a static image and creates the animation from thin air. Most of the photos you see here were shot in Nebraska between 2004-2013. You can see many more examples on his website.
