future-tongue reblogged
future-tongue reblogged
The Rwanda bill has been passed. People seeking asylum in the UK are no longer safe. This bill has been criticised by many human rights groups, yet parliment have still decided to go ahead with it. People are seeking safety in the UK, and are being turned away. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.". The Rwanda bill prevents this. There is no conformation that people sent to Rwanda will be safe there. This is a blatant violation of human rights. Asylum seekers are human too, and they should be treated as such.
The bill restricts asylum seekers’ abilities to challenge the policy as a whole, or to challenge the notion that Rwanda is safe, but there may be room for a legal challenge based on their own personal circumstances - such as a history of trafficking, or being LGBTQ+. After being notified of their removal to Rwanda, an asylum seeker would have seven days to seek to appeal their deportation. A proportion of these appeals will go to the upper immigration tribunal, which then must determine each case within 22 days. The government has recruited a pool of judges to deal with these appeals so that flights can get off the ground in the summer. These individual challenges could in theory be taken all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where judges could then issue a ruling that the deportation of that person would be unlawful. Countries signed up to the ECHR are not bound by these rulings, even though they very rarely ignore them. Mr Sunak has already indicated that he will ignore any ECHR ruling that tries to stop flights to Rwanda. The civil service union, the FDA, is also considering a legal challenge to the bill . General secretary Dave Penman said the bill left civil servants “in an invidious position, where a minister could instruct them to break international law but their professional obligation, as set out in the civil service code, prohibits them from doing so.” Mr Sunak said civil servants must deliver instructions from ministers to ignore ECHR rulings. He said he had amended guidance for civil servants to make it clear that they need to follow directions from ministers, even if the directions go against international law.
future-tongue reblogged
kragehund-again
biologist here! why are plants green? well they suck up air from the sky (blue) and mix it with the sunlight (yellow) i fucking love science.
Every time I see this post I fly into an incandescent rage because it’s VERY ALMOST TRUE and it FUCKING SHOULDN’T BE and I HATE the way op explains it
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Matisse Circle by Leonard Nimroy, The Full Body Project
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yoga session with ms. collared-dove and her husband
apr 9, 2024
nebraska, US
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Memories Made In Moonlight
Watercolor on Black Cotton Paper
2024, 9"x 12"
Blue Forget Me Nots
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Botanical designs from One Hundred Newly Selected Designs by Kōrin (Kōrin shinsen hyakuzu), 1864.
future-tongue reblogged
Hey, happy Earth Day! Who wants to talk about climate change?
Yeah, okay, fair, I kinda figured the answer to that would be "ugh do we have to?" What if I told you I have good news though? Good news with caveats, but still good news.
What if I told you that since the Paris Agreement in 2015, we've avoided a whole degree celsius of global warming by 2100, or maybe more?
Current projections are 2.7C, which is way better than the 3-5C (with a median of 3.7C) we were expecting in 2015. It's not where we want to be - 1.5C - but it is big, noticeable progress!
And it's not like we either hit 1.5C and avoid all the big scary consequences or fail to hit 1.5C and get all of them - every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid is going to prevent more severe problems like extreme weather, sea level rise, etc.
This means that climate change mitigation efforts are having a noticeable impact! This means a dramatically better, safer future - and if we keep pushing, we could lower the amount of global warming we end up with even further. This is huge progress, and we need to celebrate it, even though the fight isn't over.
It's working. Keep going.
future-tongue reblogged
Since the 1960s, the world has seen a spike in the number of natural disasters, largely due to rising sea levels and an ever gradually increasing global surface temperature.
The good news? We’re getting better at helping each other when disasters strike.
According to a recent study from Our World In Data, the global toll from natural disasters has dramatically dropped in the last century.
“Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, but such high losses of human life are,” wrote lead authors Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado.
To conduct their research, Ritchie and Rosado gathered data from all geophysical, meteorological, and climate-related disasters since 1900. That includes earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides, drought, wildfires, severe storms, and mass floods.
In the early-to-mid 20th century, the average annual death toll from disasters was very high, often climbing to over a million.
For example, the study cites that in 1931, 2.7 million people died from the Yangtze–Huai River floods. In 1943, 1.9 million died from the Bangladeshi famine of 1943. Even low-frequency events had extreme death tolls.
“In recent decades we have seen a substantial decline in deaths,” Ritchie and Rosado observed. “Even in peak years with high-impact events, the death toll has not exceeded 500,000 since the mid-1960s.”
Why has the global death toll from disasters dropped?
There are a number of factors at play in the improvement of disaster aid, but the leading component is that human beings are getting better at predicting and preparing for natural disasters.
“We know from historical data that the world has seen a significant reduction in disaster deaths through earlier prediction, more resilient infrastructure, emergency preparedness, and response systems,” Ritchie and Rosado explained in their study.
On April 6, [2024],a 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked the city of Hualien in Taiwan. Days later, as search and rescue continues, the death toll currently rests at 16.
Experts have praised Taiwan for their speedy response and recovery, and attributed the low death toll to the measures that Taiwan implemented after an earthquake of similar strength hit the city 25 years earlier. Sadly, on that day in 1999, 2,400 people died and 11,000 were injured.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Wang Yu — assistant professor at National Taiwan University — said that event, known as the Chi-Chi earthquake, revolutionized the way Taiwan approached natural disasters.
“There were lots of lessons we learned, including the improvement of building codes, understanding earthquake warning signs, the development and implementation of earthquake early warning (EEW) systems and earthquake education,” said Wang.
Those same sensors and monitoring systems allowed authorities to create “shakemaps” during Hualien’s latest earthquake, which helped them direct rescue teams to the regions that were hit the hardest.
This, in conjunction with stronger building codes, regular earthquake drills, and public education campaigns, played a huge role in reducing the number of deaths from the event.
And Taiwan’s safeguards on April 6 are just one example of recent measures against disasters. Similar models in strengthening prediction, preparedness, and recovery time have been employed around the world when it comes to rescuing victims of floods, wildfires, tornados, and so on.
What else can we learn from this study?
When concluding the findings from their study, Ritchie and Rosado emphasized the importance of increasing safety measures for everyone.
Currently, there is still a divide between populations with high gross national income and populations living in extreme poverty.
Even low-income countries that infrequently have natural disasters have a much higher death rate because they are vulnerable to collapse, displacement, and disrepair.
“Those at low incomes are often the most vulnerable to disaster events; improving living standards, infrastructure, and response systems in these regions will be key to preventing deaths from natural disasters in the coming decades,” surmised Ritchie and Rosado.
“Overall development, poverty alleviation, and knowledge-sharing of how to increase resilience to natural disasters will therefore be key to reducing the toll of disasters in the decades to come."
-via GoodGoodGood, April 11, 2024
future-tongue reblogged
Anonymous asked:
One more joke hate: You may claim to be a woman but biologically you are a featherless biped and thus a man.
Finally a good argument for why I'm actually a man
if you told diogenes the cynic about being trans he'd be like "lol that's a sick troll you're epic" and you'd be like "diogenes no i'm serious" and he'd be like "lol that's even better lmao those guys are so mad about it" and then he'd start going by new original neopronouns every single day specifically to piss off the whole symposium
I just had an idea for a really dumb comedy sketch where a transphobe starts ranting about what really makes a women a woman, and diogenes returns each time with a different cis woman or outwardly femme intersex person that doesn't meet the criteria saying "behold, a man!"
"a woman has XX chromosomes"
*Diogenes with an androgen insensitive XY cis woman*: behold, a man!
"Nono, a woman can bear children!"
*Diogenes with someone who has medical complications associated with pregnancy*: "behold, a man!"
"nono, a woman produces the large gamete"
*Diogenes with a postmenopausal cis woman* "behold, a man!"
Trans Rights With Diogenes! coming to PBS
Some idiot: only women can produce eggs!
*Diogenes holds up a chicken* Behold! A woman!
future-tongue reblogged
ive been having fun with darkest dungeon recently eheheh
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Lindt, Mondelēz, and Nestlé together raked in nearly $4 billion in profits from chocolate sales in 2023. Hershey’s confectionary profits totaled $2 billion last year. The four corporations paid out on average 97 percent of their total net profits to shareholders in 2023. The collective fortunes of the Ferrero and Mars families, who own the two biggest private chocolate corporations, surged to $160.9 billion during the same period. This is more than the combined GDPs of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply most cocoa beans. Decades of low prices have made farmers poorer and hampered their ability to hire workers or invest in their farms, limiting bean yield. Old cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to disease and extreme weather. Many farmers are abandoning cocoa for other crops, or selling their land to illegal miners.
Source: oxfam.org
future-tongue reblogged
But there was a period of friction, when “hello” was spreading beyond its summoning origins to become a general-purpose greeting, and not everyone was a fan. I was reminded of this when watching a scene in the BBC television series Call the Midwife, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where a younger midwife greets an older one with a cheerful “Hello!” “When I was in training,” sniffs the older character, “we were always taught to say ‘good morning,’ ‘good afternoon,’ or ‘good evening.’ ‘Hello’ would not have been permitted.” To the younger character, “hello” has firmly crossed the line into a phatic greeting. But to the older character, or perhaps more accurately to her instructors as a young nurse, “hello” still retains an impertinent whiff of summoning. Etiquette books as late as the 1940s were still advising against “hello,” but in the mouth of a character from the 1960s, being anti-hello is intended to make her look like a fussbudget, especially playing for an audience of the future who’s forgotten that anyone ever objected to “hello.”
Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch
Posts that remind me to nerd out about the intricacies of historical fiction writing
This isn't historical fiction, but period fiction, but I remember having a jarring OH reaction when discovering something that's just a standard part of English now was less than a hundred years old by reading a book. the book was Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers, published in 1930, and in the first chapter a judge is speaking:
‘It is not necessary for him, or her, to prove innocence; it is, in the modern slang phrase, “up to” the Crown to prove guilt...’
There are several particularly good examples of this in books by Frances Hodgson Burnett, who lived in both the UK and the US and several times depicts characters from those two places encountering each other. For example, The Shuttle was published in 1907 and has this delightful passage of two British characters encountering an American:
“Upon my word,” Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour quite glowed, “I like that queer young fellow—I like him. He does not wish to 'butt in too much.' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And what a humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some butting animal—a goat, I seem to see, preferably—forcing its way into a group or closed circle of persons.” His gleeful analysis of the phrase had such evident charm for him that Mount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G. Selden had done at the adroit mention of Weber & Fields. “Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour with G. Selden, surrounded by the atmosphere of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, would be a cheering thing,” he said. “It would,” Mr. Penzance answered. “Let us go by all means. We should not, I suppose,” with keen delight, “be 'butting in' upon Lady Anstruthers too early?” He was quite enraptured with his own aptness. “Like G. Selden, I should not like to 'butt in,'” he added.
And the more I see historical examples of people encountering novel expressions that are utterly unremarkable to us now, the more I think, you know what, I might as well approach language change with gleeful delight rather than a fussbudgety sniff.
future-tongue reblogged
The measles outbreaks are getting so insanely frustrating and outrageous. It’s not just the US now. But the worst part is seeing health authorities and articles starting to adopt Covid language to describe measles. Of course it’s a logical step, but it’s just unbelievable to see something like measles talked about like it’s a normal winter illness, or to pretend that it isn’t airborne. I guess they can’t recommend airborne disease control measures for measles if they’re pretending they don’t exist for Covid. But like. What the hell.
If it’s been decades since your MMR vaccines, consider getting a titer test done to see if you still have adequate antibodies, especially if you spend time around young children. You can get a booster if your immunity has waned.
Measles is dangerous AF. If you survive it, it still literally resets your immune system. The normal thing to do is to put out public health calls for anyone who walked through the airport or the bank or the Taco Bell for a period of hours after the infectious person was been there. Not assuring parents not to worry about it. (Why am I surprised? It’s Florida.)
You should not be fucking around with Covid and you should not be fucking around with the measles.
If my fellow Brits were hoping this was just the USA, I've just had an email from the NHS to say, essentially, 'we know you're having cancer treatment rn, well there's measles fucking everywhere'
Helpfully the only advice they give for avoiding it is 'get vaccinated' immediately followed by 'but if you're being treated for cancer you can't'!
Seriously though, if you're in the UK and reading this, check you had the full MMR vaccine as a kid, and you didn't, contact your GP. It's free for adults under the NHS.
There is actually much more measles in Europe than in NA.
(But of course, with measles being one of the most contagious diseases ever, more contagious than covid, vaccination rates dropping, and Covid weakening everyone’s immune systems and being especially prevalent among school children, these numbers could easily go up quickly if parents really do start sending their children to school infected.)
The US’s biggest measles outbreak was actually in 2019, pre-pandemic. However, the main point of my post is how Covid has shifted the way people think about public health irrevocably. In Europe, measles is still taken seriously… for now. But public health measures are under threat everywhere. And if HCWs aren’t given proper PPE for Covid, with incomparably more cases (since, you know, pandemic), what are the chances they’ll be given it and encouraged to wear it for measles?
Why would anyone encourage kids with measles to go to school? Because covid has made attendance such a pressing issue. Schools have become stricter about attendance in response to all the kids being out sick with covid. The authorities have gone through a process and come out the other side deciding concretely that children’s health and well-being are less important than attendance records.
The MMR vaccine, thankfully, is reliable and widespread, and would mitigate the spread of measles. But as the person above pointed out, many immunocompromised people cannot get vaccinated. The death rate of measles is… quite high for immunocompromised people. What’s the best way to avoid infection if you can’t get vaccinated? Obviously, it’s to wear a respirator. But not a single health authority in the world is in a comfortable position to wholeheartedly recommend respirators now, because they’ve all spent years rejecting them for Covid, and they don’t want to be held accountable for that.
Is it a coincidence that measles had “unusually low activity” in Europe in the first years of the pandemic? Is it a coincidence that after the massive rise of cases in the US (1249) in 2019, the numbers suddenly went down dramatically in 2020? No, of course not.
But for the same reason, health authorities will now struggle to keep it contained because of the situation they’ve created for themselves. That’s what I meant by the situation being insanely frustrating.
future-tongue reblogged
Have some out of context Gundam to start your day.
future-tongue reblogged
ルジャーノ嬢
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some original art i made after disappearing from the face of the (tumblr) earth
[image ID: an illustration of a skeleton from a low angle near the pelvis looking up. Many different species of butterflies flutter inside and around the skeleton, including a Monarch drying its wings after emerging from a cocoon inside the rib cage. End ID.]