🔗 Articles: Thursday 09.May.2024
9to5Mac: Vision Pro support arrives for Duet Display and Screens to enhance your virtual desktop
More functionality for Vision Pro has landed with two new third-party app updates. The popular Duet Display and Screens are both now available for Apple’s headset. Here are all the details and features.
NYT: Milan Cracks Down on Nightlife After Campaign to Lure Visitors
Packed bars with carousing revelers spilling onto clogged streets. Takeaway booze swigged by drunken tourists and students. Earsplitting volumes in once quiet residential neighborhoods long after midnight.
When Milan’s authorities embarked years ago on plans to promote the city as a buzzy destination by building on its reputation as Italy’s hip fashion and design capital, the resulting noise and rowdy overcrowding were perhaps not quite what they had in mind.
Yahoo Sports: Sheldon Keefe fired as Maple Leafs’ head coach after 5 seasons
“Today’s decision was difficult,” said Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving in a statement. “Sheldon is an excellent coach and a great man; however, we determined a new voice is needed to help the team push through to reach our ultimate goal. We thank Sheldon for his hard work and dedication to the organization over the last nine years, and wish him and his family all the very best.”
As far as Keefe’s staff — Guy Boucher, Dean Chynoweth, Manny Malholtra, Mike van Ryn and Curtis Sanford — the team says “decisions regarding the remainder of the coaching staff will follow.”
Guardian: Record-breaking increase in CO2 levels in world’s atmosphere
The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet.
The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2levels over a 12-month period.
The increase has been spurred, scientists say, by the periodic El Niño climate event, which has now waned, as well as the ongoing and increasing amounts of greenhouse gases expelled into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.
via Denny
Guardian: Is a previously unheard-of First Nation just Canada’s latest Pretendian case?
Local chiefs claim Kawartha Lakes First Nation is part of a wave of cases in which people falsely claim Indigenous identity.
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About two months ago, William Denby, the self-proclaimed “chief” of the Kawartha group began sending emails to local chiefs, municipal and provincial officials. The messages, seen by the Guardian, were often written in all caps and combined grievances and increasingly bold claims.
Denby protested against the destruction of farmland for housing developments and made broad allegations of corruption. He also said he was the hereditary leader of a forgotten Indigenous nation and claimed his group had rights to nearly 5,800 square miles (15,000 sq km) of land.
Guardian: Trump promised to scrap climate laws if US oil bosses donated $1bn – report
According to the Washington Post, the former US president made his jaw-dropping pitch, which the paper described as “remarkably blunt and transactional”, at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and club.
In front of more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, he promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution. He would also overturn the Biden administration’s decision in Januaryto pause new natural gas export permits which have been denounced as “climate bombs”.
“You’ll get it on the first day,” Trump said, according to the Post, citing an unnamed dinner attendee.
Guardian: World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target
Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.
Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
Will people adopt the changes that are required, or will we pay the far higher price of inaction?
Guardian: ‘Destruction of the human experience’: Apple iPad ad prompts online backlash
Apple has faced an online backlash over an advert for its new iPad that features an industrial-sized hydraulic press crushing a collection of objects and gadgets including musical instruments and books.
The ad, launched by Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, on Tuesday, shows the machine squashing an array of items – ranging from a piano and a metronome to tins of paint and an arcade game – before a single iPad Pro then appears in their place. A voiceover then states: “The most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest.”
But the revenues! 🤑🙄
TorStar: Green Party trying to move past an ugly internal rift
Some Green Party members are calling for a new leadership election a year and a half after long-time Green MP Elizabeth May returned to power as party leader on a mandate to co-lead with activist Jonathan Pedneault.
Although the pair campaigned on a co-leadership bid, the party’s constitution does not allow co-leaders, and there is debate about whether changing the constitution to allow it should warrant a new leadership election. It’s unclear if May and Pedneault, who has yet to be officially made co-leader, would have to face election if the constitution is overhauled.
Wikipedia: The Waffle
The Waffle (officially known as the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada after 1972) was a radical wing of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It later transformed into an independent political party, with little electoral success before it permanently disbanded in the mid-1970s. It was generally a New Left youth movement that espoused both Canadian nationalism and solidarity with the Quebec sovereignty movement.
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Lewis remained hostile; in 1972, he described the Waffle as “an encumbrance around my neck”. Then at the NDP’s Provincial Council on 24 June, Lewis obtained a resolution ordering the Waffle to disband or else leave the NDP. Debate on the motion lasted for three hours, with labour leaders leading the charge to expel the Waffle. Finally, the council approved the anti-Waffle motion 217 to 86, thereby ending months of public feuding.
TorStar: Premier Ford staffer met with developer over Greenbelt land
A member of Premier Doug Ford’s officeattended a private meeting with a developer regarding his land that was later removed from the Greenbelt, reigniting questions about how directly involved the premier’s staff were in the ill-fated housing development plan.
Newly released records show that Carlo Oliviero, who was at the time the executive director of stakeholder relations for Ford, was invited to the meeting about Greenbelt lands in Hamilton. The invitation was forwarded by a well-known lobbyist and former executive assistant of the premier’s.
Within days of the meeting, internal emails show, housing ministry staff were actively researching the land in Hamiltonbefore ultimately selecting it for Greenbelt removal.
ScienceAlert: Alarming Study Finds 99% of Fake Painkillers Tested Contain Fentanyl
In 2022, of all the counterfeit oxycodone seized by Rhode Island law enforcement, virtually every pill that scientists tested contained fentanyl – a synthetic narcotic 50 times more powerful than heroin and now claiming the lives of more than 100,000 people a year nationally.
Between 2017 and 2020, only 10 percent of fake oxycodone pills seized by the state contained fentanyl, researchers at Brown say.
That’s an incredibly steep rise for a particularly dangerous street drug – one that’s made all the more concerning by fentanyl’s regular pairing with a strong sedative: a non-opioid horse tranquilizer called xylazine, that is not approved for human use.
CBC: Writer and journalist Rex Murphy dead at 77: National Post
Rex Murphy, the controversial Newfoundland-born pundit and wordsmith whose writing and often-blistering commentaries were the focus of a decades-long career in Canadian media, has died at the age of 77, according to the National Post.
“You might not agree with what Rex had to say, but oh, boy, could he ever say it,” said comedian and fellow Newfoundlander Mark Critch, who performed an impression of Murphy on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
In a report published on the Post’s website on Thursday, the newspaper said Murphy died after a battle with cancer.
Rhodes scholar.
ScienceAlert: Scientists Discover First-of-Its-Kind Molecule That Absorbs Greenhouse Gasses
A ‘cage of cages’ is how scientists have described a new type of porous material, unique in its molecular structure, that could be used to trap carbon dioxide and another, more potent greenhouse gas.
Synthesized in the lab by researchers in the UK and China, the material is made in two steps, with reactions assembling triangular prism building blocks into larger, more symmetrical tetrahedral cages – producing the first molecular structure of its kind, the team claims.
The resulting material, with its abundance of polar molecules, attracts and holds greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide(CO2) with strong affinity. It also showed excellent stability in water, which would be critical for its use in capturing carbon in industrial settings, from wet or humid gas streams.
Last Updated: 09.May.2024 22:48 EDT