Meet the $21 Million
Company That Thinks
a New iPhone Is a
Total Waste of Money
David Whitford,
Inc.
We’re no stranger to iFixit’s in-depth teardowns here at Engadget, but the company has a plan that’s much more than ripping apart the latest gadge…
It’s a cartoon cliche that’s a cliche for a reason. Mail carriers really do live in fear of Fido. And now that Americans are increasingly doing their shopping online, the beleaguered members of the U.S. Postal Service have been getting bitten by dogs more often. They’ve even built an app to help avoid the canines that…
Before it started obsessing about copying Snapchat, Instagram’s main goal was getting your phone photos looking their best. The app’s smart image processing doesn’t have to stay locked on your mobile though—you can replicate the effects in Photoshop or any photo editor with similar tools.
2017 continues to be a very bad year for Uber. After ongoing evidence of the company’s systematic harassment of women employees, the discovery of a tool used to evade law enforcement, and a damning lawsuit from Google, the ride-hailing service has now been handed a nationwide ban in Italy. A court in Rome has ruled that Uber’s service amounts to … Continue reading
Over the years, there have been many divides that have defined the American social, cultural, or political landscape. Some have been philosophical, regional, issue-based, racial, economic, gender or age-related. But none have been as deep or as disturbing as the divide that is currently fracturing the American people.
This one is different because it crosses demographic lines (except for race) and isn’t as much about ideas or issues as it is about the person of Donald Trump. I’m not sure if he is the source of this rupture or if he is a symptom of it. But whether it is one or the other or both, it should be clear that this division is about Trump. In listening to conversations about the president, it feels as if we have become two separate nations, with each seeing him and what he represents so differently that we can no longer understand each other or even speak with each other.
About 60 percent of Americans just don’t trust Trump. They see him as impulsive, erratic, and unbalanced; they are either disgusted by or embarrassed by his behavior; and they are frightened at the prospect of the lasting damage they fear he will do to the country and its institutions.
This past week, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of six lengthy “no holds barred” editorials that captured the mind-set of this 60 percent. Collectively the editorials constituted a scathing indictment of the dangers posed to America, its political culture and institutions by the presidency of Donald Trump.
They charged him with: repeatedly demonstrating “an utter disregard for truth”; giving voice to race-based conspiracy theories; “targeting the darkness, anger, and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnessing them for his own purposes”; and “undermining public confidence” in core American institutions (a free press, an independent judiciary, and the electoral process, itself).
In one particularly devastating paragraph the Times’ editorial board wrote:
“What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that is is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth, and success, his determination to vanquish enemies, real and imagined, his craving for adulation—these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped him get elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous”.
While I confess that I identify with the views of the Times, I recognize how important it is to remember the nearly 40 percent of Americans who hold a dramatically different view of the president they elected. They see him as a truth-teller who represents their last, best hope to restore traditional values they feel are in danger of being lost. They have placed their trust in him and believe that he is the strong and principled leader who will defend them, fight for their interests and “make America great again.” Even now, they turn out at Trump rallies, they cheer him on and they continue to believe in him.
They are true believers who reject any criticism of their president and appear to be resistant to letting truth or facts get in the way of their support. He has backtracked on issues that were central to his candidacy (building a wall paid for by Mexico) or told bold-faced lies (that his crowds or ratings were bigger than those of President Obama) and yet his most ardent followers haven’t blinked an eye.
It is difficult to understand how Evangelicals could vote for and continue to support a thrice-married hedonist. Or why so many women would vote for and continue to support a misogynist who has spoken of women in such degrading terms. Or why honest, hard-working Americans facing economic hardships could put their faith in an individual who in his multiple bankruptcies has brought economic ruin to tens of thousands of folks just like them.
Equally confounding is how, in an election year: where “elites” were rejected; where voters railed against “out of touch” politicians who couldn’t be trusted to defend the interests of the common man; and where a key concern for many was the class-based issue of the “rich getting richer, while the poor get poorer”—some voters chose and still stand by a president who was: born rich and parlayed “pay-for play politics” to get richer, and flies, at the public’s expense, between the White House and his Florida golf resort while his children continue to fly around the world making business deals in foreign lands (while receiving publicly financed security protection).
The academic part of me can understand what’s going on, nevertheless, I am troubled. I did my post-doctoral work studying movements that spring up in societies under stress—where severe or prolonged social and political dislocation have produced societal shock sufficiently disturbing to leave portions of the population vulnerable and open to messages and messengers who can explain their plight and rationalize their anxiety. They respond to and often place blind trust in leaders who provide them answers to their confusion and a sense of security that can resolve their stress. This can be as harmless as a feel-good preacher whose message acts as a palliative or it can be dangerous as in the many times in history when we have seen the emergence of leaders who prey on fear and vulnerability and foment division and anger and violence.
I know how this works and have studied it in other societies. I must confess, however, to being deeply distressed when I see it playing out in front of me. Intellectually I know what’s going on, emotionally, I just can’t. And I worry. Because the divide—between those who believe that Trump will save us and those who are convinced he will bring us ruin—has grown so deep that even rational discussion has become impossible.
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Legendary news anchor Dan Rather had some strong words for journalists who fawned over the U.S. airstrike in Syria this week while asking few critical questions.
“The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as ‘presidential’ is concerning,” Rather wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. “War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike.”
Cable news personalities on Friday seemed to equate the legitimacy of a U.S. president with dropping bombs. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria stated that “Donald Trump became president of the United States” when the strikes started, while The Washington Post’s David Ignatius said on MSNBC that the commander in chief had “put pure more umph, more credibility” back into “American power.”MSNBC’s Brian Williams went so far as to call the Tomahawk missiles ― which state-run Syrian media reported killed at least nine people, including four children — “beautiful.”
Rather pointed out that no matter what someone’s opinion on whether the airstrike was the correct course of action, the media’s job is to ask difficult questions, not drool over the spectacle of war:
The role of the press is to ask hard questions. There is ample evidence that this Administration needs to face deep scrutiny. The lies we have heard, the chaos in governance, and the looming questions about ties with Russia – itself a major player in Syria – demand that the press treat this latest action with healthy skepticism. Perhaps it was the right thing to do. Perhaps a strong and wise policy will emerge. But that judgement is still definitely hanging in the balance.
Read Rather’s whole post below.
As Fusion editor Alex Pareene noted last month, equating dropping bombs with being “presidential” is especially dangerous in the era of Trump, who has demonstrated repeatedly that he cares deeply about how he’s treated on TV.
Several journalists, including The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, suggested that the strike could have been a calculated move on Trump’s part to turn press coverage in his favor.
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The planet is on the brink of the sixth mass extinction, an epoch that scientists say could see humans wiping out at least 75 percent of the Earth’s species. Much has already been made of humans’ impact on wildlife. Last year, a damning World Wildlife Fund report revealed that people were on track to killing off two-thirds of the world’s vertebrates.
But it’s not just birds and bears that are facing extinction due to human activity. Thousands of tree species are under threat as well, according to the first global database of the world’s trees, unveiled this week by Botanic Gardens Conservation International.
The UK-based organization, whose members include hundreds of botanical institutions worldwide, said it pulled data from more than 500 published sources to create the online database GlobalTreeSearch, the world’s first “global, authoritative list of tree species.” BGCI, in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, identified 60,065 tree species currently living on Earth. Of that number, more than half were found to only occur in a single country, which could suggest an increased vulnerability to threats, said the authors of the database.
The researchers described their findings in a paper published this week in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry. According to the paper, the conservation status of only about 20,000 tree species, or 30 percent of the world’s trees, are currently known. But of those assessed, almost half ― or 9,600 tree species ― are considered threatened with extinction. This means that around 15 percent of all tree species are under threat.
More than 300 species are critically endangered, with just 50 or fewer individual trees left on the planet, the researchers said. One particular species, the Karomia gigas, or Chinese Hats tree, was found to have only one population of trees still living — just six trees in a remote part of Tanzania. The researchers said the tree had been driven to extinction from over harvesting for construction and furniture-making.
Deforestation and over exploitation were found to be the leading threats facing the world’s trees, according to the paper.
Compiling the database was a massive undertaking, said BCGI.
“Although it seems extraordinary that it has taken us until 2017 to publish the first global, authoritative list of tree species, it is worth remembering that GlobalTreeSearch represents a huge scientific effort encompassing the discovery, collection and describing of tens of thousands of plant species,” said Paul Smith, BGCI’s secretary general, in a statement this week. “This is ‘big science’ involving the work of thousands of botanists over a period of centuries.”
BCGI said it hopes the database will serve as an important tool for tree conservation. The database ― which lists the geographical distribution of tree species ― could, for instance, help conservationists locate individual species, said Smith.
“Getting location information, such as which countries do these trees occur in, gives us key information for conservation purposes. That is hugely useful for us in prioritizing which ones we need to do conservation action on and which ones we need to do assessments to find out what their status is,” he said.
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Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to dominique.mosbergen@huffingtonpost.com or follow her on Twitter.
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Spoilers ahead for the Ghost in the Shell anime and US remake.
The original Ghost in the Shell anime feature is a cultural landmark. It was a neo-noir story set in a startlingly fresh vision of a connected world, and it was particularly timely in 19…
Anthony Hopkins has worked with some of the best in the business, like Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone. The latest visionary director to earn Sir Hopkins’ favor? None other than the king of explosions, Michael Bay.
What you’re seeing here is a baby crib designed and built by Ford. Yes, the car company, and no, this isn’t a late April Fools’ joke. It’s dubbed the Max Motor Dreams, and it’s essentially a “smart bed” for babies that can simulate the feel of riding in a car — a well-known trick for parents with little ones that … Continue reading
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