Thursday, April 11, 2024

Bats of the Midnight Sun

For Hakai Magazine, Trina Moyles introduces us to Jesika Reimer, a chiropterologist who is leading the world’s first gene-flow study to better understand the hibernation patterns of bat colonies in Alaska. Bats, who have a bad rap as vectors for rabies, are little understood for the critical and varying roles they play in the environment.

Bats are incredibly diverse in their adaptations. They’re the only mammal capable of true flight, living on every continent except Antarctica. Next to rodents, bats are the second-largest mammal group in the world, with over 1,400 documented species and counting. These range from massive fruits bats—the size of a small human child—to the tiny bumblebee bat, which weighs in at just two grams. The fish-eating bat, meanwhile, has elongated feet for raking the surface of the water to catch fish and crustaceans. And the Mexican long-tongued bat uses its long, tubular tongue—nearly half the length of its body—to feed on nectar. Bats are the major pollinators of over 500 different plant species, boosting both natural habitats and human agriculture.

Despite these wonders, the bat has an unfair reputation as a “bloodthirsty, rabies-carrying rodent,” Reimer says. “In North America, less than two percent of wild bats test positive for rabies, a number significantly lower than, say, foxes,” she points out. In 2021, only three people in the United States died from rabies contracted from bats.



from Longreads https://ift.tt/sl5Gu6b

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/MUQxSNA

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

One Man’s Quest to Transform the West Texas Desert

Shaun Overton, a former programmer from Fort Worth, Texas, has a vision: to turn his 320 acres in far West Texas into a desert forest. Overton, having no formal experience in ecology, hydrology, or agriculture, has grown an audience by sharing videos on TikTok and YouTube from his property, Dustups Ranch, about his efforts to change the landscape into one of abundance. His work has caught the attention of conservationists as well as volunteers who want to help; critics, however, are skeptical, saying he should instead focus on restoring the natural habitat rather than try to grow a forest in a harsh environment and climate. Ultimately, it’s an inspiring journey, and Wes Ferguson captures it nicely.

Overton recently began using the bulldozer he purchased to put in a dam for a pond—again, learning as he goes. He’s also using it to build terraces along a hillside where he hopes to soon plant fast-growing “pioneer” trees that can withstand the harsh conditions of the desert. Once those trees are established, he wants to add fruit and nut trees.

Addington says he is reserving judgment until he’s had a chance to visit Overton’s property. “Shaun is conservation-minded. He really is. He cares about the land, and he wants to improve it,” says Addington, 67, a longtime environmental activist who has made headlines over the years for, among other things, defeating a proposed nuclear waste site near Sierra Blanca. When asked if Addington thinks a desert forest is possible, he pauses. “Not a forest, no,” he says. “You can catch water and grow things. Ranchers have done that out here before. It’s not exactly new, to be honest.”

But Addington has noticed the attention Dustups is bringing to Hudspeth County, both in the form of online views and the volunteers who flock from around the state to work on the property. “I’m interested in what Shaun’s doing to get more people out here, so they’ll actually appreciate the land. You only protect what you love, right?” he says. “Most people drive through here at 80 miles per hour. They don’t realize what’s out here.”



from Longreads https://ift.tt/xw0s2nM

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/MUQxSNA

Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost Break Down the Making of Shaun of the Dead, 20 Years Later

Shaun of the Dead was a British movie that launched a new genre: zombie romantic comedy. It also launched the Hollywood careers of director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In this endearing interview, the three look back on the film fondly.

Nick Frost: I saw a picture of us at the [Shaun of the Dead] premiere the other day, and it struck me that I’m now the age Bill Nighy was at the premiere.

Edgar Wright: No way.

Frost: Yeah, really. What was Bill? 50-odd? 54, 52? We’re in that ballpark now. And it’s funny, I’m doing a job with kids who’re in their 20s, and it’s like, I am their— I’m not Bill Nighy at all, but age-wise, I’m their Bill Nighy.

Simon Pegg: We used to sit around in Bill’s trailer, just listening to him tell us stories about his wilder days. He was just like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the shoot. It’s crazy to think that we’re that age now.



from Longreads https://ift.tt/h9SlNnZ

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/MUQxSNA

The Toxic Culture at Tesla

Colleagues using the N-word frequently and openly. Spray-painted swastikas in the parking lot. White-power graffiti in the bathroom. Inappropriate touching and catcalling. On-the-job injuries. A lack of training. The list goes on. Bryce Covert’s cover story for The Nation is a deep dive into the rampant and blatant racism, sexual harassment, and discrimination that Black and female employees face at Tesla, and its factory in Fremont, California, in particular.

After Jermaine Keys’s twins were born, he needed more than the $15 an hour he was earning at a construction company. So in September 2019, Keys got a job at Tesla’s Fremont factory, which paid about $23 an hour. “It was a big difference,” he told me. At first, Keys enjoyed the job. But a few months in, his supervisor started calling him “boy.” Keys heard white coworkers use the N-word and call people “monkey.” There was a swastika drawn with a black marker near where he clocked in to work every day. Black workers, he said, were made to do things like clean up the work area when the assembly line was slow; white ones weren’t. “It was just hurtful,” Keys said. When he said something to a supervisor, he was told to put his head down so he wouldn’t get fired.



from Longreads https://ift.tt/h7jCX3U

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/MUQxSNA

Tuesday, April 09, 2024

Silicon Savanna: The Workers Taking on Africa’s Digital Sweatshops

You may have read about the trauma afflicting American workers who do content moderation for tech companies. But these days, moderation work—and, thus, the aforementioned trauma—is increasingly being outsourced. In fact, it’s being sold as a way to help people climb out of poverty:

For companies like Sama, the conditions here were ripe for investment by 2015, when the firm established a business presence in Nairobi. Headquartered in San Francisco, the self-described “ethical AI” company aims to “provide individuals from marginalized communities with training and connections to dignified digital work.” In Nairobi, it has drawn its labor from residents of the city’s informal settlements, including 500 workers from Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa. In an email, a Sama spokesperson confirmed moderators in Kenya made between $1.46 and $3.74 per hour after taxes.

Grace Mutung’u, a Nairobi-based digital rights researcher at Open Society Foundations, put this into local context for me. On the surface, working for a place like Sama seemed like a huge step up for young people from the slums, many of whom had family roots in factory work. It was less physically demanding and more lucrative. Compared to manual labor, content moderation “looked very dignified,” Mutung’u said. She recalled speaking with newly hired moderators at an informal settlement near the company’s headquarters. Unlike their parents, many of them were high school graduates, thanks to a government initiative in the mid-2000s to get more kids in school.

“These kids were just telling me how being hired by Sama was the dream come true,” Mutung’u told me. “We are getting proper jobs, our education matters.” These younger workers, Mutung’u continued, “thought: ‘We made it in life.’” They thought they had left behind the poverty and grinding jobs that wore down their parents’ bodies. Until, she added, “the mental health issues started eating them up.” 



from Longreads https://ift.tt/DEWeUmM

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/qPthgEZ

She Had a Severe Brain Injury—So Her Husband Turned to an Unprecedented Therapy

Can psychedelics help to restore consciousness in a patient whose awareness is impaired or seemingly gone? Can these powerful drugs give the brain a chance to reorganize and rewire itself? After David’s wife, Sarah, was hit by a car, she suffered severe brain damage; she became unresponsive and remained in a coma, and David explored many treatments with no success. Working with a neuroscientist in Belgium, whose research involves using psilocybin and ketamine in patients with “disorders of consciousness,” he decided to give a dose of distilled liquid psilocybin high enough to induce a psychedelic experience. In this fascinating read, Jonathan Moens recounts the experiment and the science behind it, and poses important ethical questions surrounding consent.

On August 25, 2023, exactly 336 days following Sarah’s tragic accident, David, who is based in Colorado where psychedelic mushrooms are decriminalized, obtained a tincture of distilled liquid psilocybin. He had already given Sarah low and moderate doses of the drug over the course of several months and it had a “remarkable” affect in her bodily movements.

This time, however, he would go all in, using the equivalent of 2.5 grams—a dose high enough to provoke a powerful psychedelic experience and which is often used in clinical trials for therapeutic purposes. At this dose, both Gosseries and Carhart-Harris said an awakening was theoretically possible.

The legalities of what David was about to do were unclear. Colorado’s decriminalization of certain psychedelics in 2022 means that psilocybin is easy to access and magic mushrooms can be grown and consumed. But whether David was crossing a line by giving Sarah the drug, when she could not consent, was not obvious.



from Longreads https://ift.tt/YObLrjo

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/qPthgEZ

Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy

Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a right-wing website called 1819 News exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn’t the only thing that was destroyed:

When the story hit the next morning, Bubba’s son Carter, a junior at Auburn, was still asleep. He woke up to a text from his best friend that read, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.”

“I had no idea what she was talking about,” Carter says. “I called her, and she told me what had happened. Immediately, I looked up my dad’s name online and saw it everywhere. It was early in the morning, and every news outlet I’d never heard of had already jumped on it, like piranhas. I watched the whole world tear him down almost instantaneously.”

Carter and his father were extremely close. Over the years, each had confided in the other about their innermost struggles—in high school, Carter had come out to his father, and Bubba had shared his secrets with his son. Carter was shocked at the meanness of the story and was overcome with a visceral fear that he had never known before. In a panic, he called his dad.

“He picked up and said, ‘Good morning, buddy.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about, Good morning?!’ Trying to calm me down, he again slowly said, ‘Good morning, buddy.’ And I said, ‘Okay, good morning.’ And then I said, ‘Dad, we have to talk.’ And he said, ‘No, we don’t. I need to get into a meeting. I have people I need to take care of. We’ll talk later.’ ”



from Longreads https://ift.tt/NSzKI2x

Check out my bookbox memberships! 3, 7, or 15 vintage books a month sent to organization of your choice, or to yourself!
https://ift.tt/qPthgEZ