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
There's also a community of people who take them home and do interesting things with them
@Flipboard @404mediaco @jasonkoebler I did not even realize Redbox went bankrupt!
I never used them, & I slowly began to avoid ordering DVDs 📀 when Netflix started streaming their content.
There are probably dozens of abandoned Redbox machines in my city.
@Flipboard @404mediaco @jasonkoebler
Cld give 'em 2 kids who like 2 play "Dr. Who", eh!? 😃
@grishka Yes, @jasonkoebler references that in his story — “I guess it seems easier or less risky to shred obsolete equipment, even when there are people who still want it,” Nathan Proctor, senior director of consumer rights group US PIRG’s right to repair campaign told me. “But as electronic waste surges, we can’t keep doing this over and over again.“ We'd love to hear stories of how people are repurposing the boxes!
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
Excellent essay. “Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective. This is true at multiple levels: between individuals, between people and institutions, and between cultures“ @TheConversationUS
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
@Flipboard @thetyee Strange take. I don't really think of the day after Thanksgiving as unusually early to have Christmas stuff up.
@stevefoerster @thetyee Harrison is Canadian so Dec. 1 is perhaps a more meaningful date for him (he also wrote a brilliant book, https://steerforth.com/product/invisible-boy-9781586423469/)
@Flipboard @thetyee Yes, I suppose in Canada, the day after Thanksgiving would be far too early. 😉
@stevefoerster @thetyee Certainly when we first moved to Canada there was a consensus that Dec. 1 was the correct date, and anything before Nov. 11 (Remembrance Day) was absolutely unacceptable.
“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
@Flipboard
I don't like how the @TexasObserver calls *identifying with #Taiwan (#台灣) as opposed to enemy #China (#中國) 🇨🇳* "#nationalism."
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
Fashion and cosmetics, two multi-billion dollar industries that do absolutely nothing.
Both industries are predicated on making people feel bad about themselves so the money flows into industry's pockets.
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
