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Images of Spain’s Floods Weren’t Created By AI — But People Think They Were (Maria)
The author writes, “My eye was caught by a striking photograph in the most recent edition of Charles Arthur’s Substack newsletter Social Warming. It shows a narrow street in the aftermath of the ‘rain bomb’ that devastated the region of Valencia in Spain. … It was an astonishing image which really stopped me in my tracks. Not surprisingly, it also went viral on social media. And then came the reaction: ‘AI image, fake news.’ The photograph was so vivid, so uncannily sharp and unreal, that it looked to viewers like something that they could have faked themselves. … But it wasn’t fake.”
10 Ways To Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won (Laura)
From Waging Nonviolence: “The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.”
Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now? (Al)
The author writes, “We have entered a new political era. For the past 40 years or so, we lived in the information age. Those of us in the educated class decided, with some justification, that the postindustrial economy would be built by people like ourselves, so we tailored social policies to meet our needs. Our education policy pushed people toward the course we followed — four-year colleges so that they would be qualified for the ‘jobs of the future.’ Meanwhile, vocational training withered. We embraced a free trade policy that moved industrial jobs to low-cost countries overseas so that we could focus our energies on knowledge economy enterprises run by people with advanced degrees. The financial and consulting sector mushroomed while manufacturing employment shriveled.”
Trump’s Election Win Sends Private Prisons Stocks Soaring as Investors Anticipate Hard Crackdown on Migration (DonkeyHotey)
From Fortune: “President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to crack down hard on mass migration promises to mean big business for private prisons. Companies like CoreCivic and Geo Group may be known for profiting from the growing population of incarcerated Americans, but they struck gold after expanding into the operation of detention centers for undocumented migrants on behalf of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Now investors are betting heavily their earnings are set to soar, bidding up shares on Wednesday in the aftermath of Trump’s election. Stock in CoreCivic surged 29% while Geo Group saw an even bigger gain, vaulting 42% in a single session.”
The Amsterdam ‘Pogrom’ That Wasn’t: Corporate Media Fails To Tell the Whole Story (Dana)
The author writes, “Thursday night, Israeli soccer fans clashed with Amsterdam residents before and after a Europa League soccer match between their team Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam. Clashes occurred outside the Johan Cruyff Arena and across the city on Thursday night. Police on Friday said five people had been taken to hospital, and 62 arrests had been made. The violence reportedly started when the far-right Israeli soccer hooligans began chanting racist and violent anti-Arab slogans, attacked Arab and Muslim residents, and vandalized houses and businesses with Palestinian flags. Yet the corporate media — both in the US and abroad — portrayed the events as one-sided ‘anti-semitic’ attacks on helpless soccer fans.”
Lithium-Ion Batteries Have Ruled For Decades. Now They Have a Challenger. (Russ)
The author writes, “After decades of lithium-ion batteries dominating the market, a new option has emerged: batteries made with sodium ions. Scientists have been researching alternatives to lithium for years. Much of the world relies on this kind of battery, but the mining and processing of its materials can be harmful to workers, local communities and the environment. Sodium has recently emerged as one of the more promising options, and experts say the material could be a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to lithium.”
This Black Fungus Might Be Healing Chernobyl by Drinking Radiation — A Biologist Explains (Sean)
From Forbes: “The explosion of the No. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26, 1986 remains the worst nuclear disaster in human history. It left a 30-kilometer exclusion zone — a deserted landscape where high radiation levels remain even now, decades after the incident — where human settlement and habitation are restricted. Within this zone, however, scientists have discovered an unlikely survivor: a resilient black fungus called Cladosporium sphaerospermum. After the Chernobyl disaster, scientists observed patches of blackened growths on the walls of the No. 4 reactor — fungi that seemed to thrive where the radiation was highest.”
