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‘We Need More Women,’ Says Only Female Winner of Millennium Engineering Prize (Maria)
The author writes, “As a Nobel laureate, Prof Frances Arnold is not short of accolades. Yet being the only woman to so far win the Millennium Technology Prize — the Nobel equivalent for engineers — is one of the least appealing. Nominations for the €1M ($1,070,602) 2024 prize closed last week, and the organizers have revealed that women formed just 16.3% of nominees, the highest of any year since the biennial award’s launch in 2004. … ‘We’d love to see more diversity in the winners of these prizes because we know that diverse people contribute to technology,’ Arnold, an American chemical engineer, told the Observer.”
How a Pittsburgh County Election Foreshadows the 2024 Presidential Race (Russ)
The author writes, “With high-profile races this fall largely limited to campaigns for governor in Kentucky and Mississippi and the fight for control of the Virginia legislature, the little-noticed Allegheny County executive contest has emerged as a barometer of the national mood. It will help gauge how far to the left Pittsburgh-area voters have moved in recent years, or whether a backlash to Democratic rule is building in an urban area like those which will be key to the party’s 2024 success. The contest will also cement which party controls the local elections board next year in a state where losing Republicans sought to overturn the 2020 results.”
This 11-Year-Old Brownsville ISD Honor Student Was Put in Solitary (DonkeyHotey)
From the Texas Observer: “A fifth-grader reported being bullied by his principal. Five days later, he was handcuffed and detained.”
Fake Nudes of Real Students Cause an Uproar at a New Jersey High School (Sean)
From The Wall Street Journal: “When girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey found out boys were sharing nude photos of them in group chats, they were shocked, and not only because it was an invasion of privacy. The images weren’t real. Students said one or more classmates used an online tool powered by artificial intelligence to make the images, then shared them with others. The discovery has sparked uproar in Westfield, an affluent town outside New York City.”
Five Decades and a Mountain of Evidence: Study Explores How Toxic Chemicals are ‘Stealing Children’s Future Potential’ (Laura)
The author writes, “Children of color and from low-income families are not only exposed to more dangerous substances but also experience disproportionate harm to their brain development, researchers report.”
Climate Change Is Keeping Therapists Up at Night (Reader Jim)
The author writes, “[Therapist] Andrew Bryant can still remember when he thought of climate change as primarily a problem of the future. … Climate change sometimes came up in therapy sessions in the context of other issues — say, a couple having arguments because they couldn’t decide if it was still ethical to have kids — but it was rare, and usually fairly theoretical. … Now lots of Bryant’s clients wanted to talk about climate change. They wanted to talk about how strange and disorienting and scary this new reality felt, about what the future might be like and how they might face it, about how to deal with all the strong feelings — helplessness, rage, depression, guilt — being stirred up inside them.”
Wild Pig-Like Animals Are Tearing Up an Arizona Golf Course. The Internet Is Delighted (Dana)
From Salon: “She’s an eco-vengeance iconoclast who loves coyote pee and running at manic speeds. She’s an unstoppable chaos queen with a stink-nipple on her butt, who turns luxury Arizona golf courses into free range charcuterie boards for her grub-worm girl dinner. She’s a guerilla class-warfare legend whose mating call sounds like the hissing warb-garble of a cappuccino machine milk-steamer. She’s the internet’s most beloved trash-eating ungulate — the uncompromising, the indefatigable, the lovely javelina.”
