California governor proposes public school ‘transformation’


BY ADAM BEAM AND JOCELYN GECKER ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAY 13, 2021

FILE - In this April 13, 2021, file photo, kindergarten students participate in a classroom activity on the first day of in-person learning at Maurice Sendak Elementary School in Los Angeles. All 4-year-olds in California could go to kindergarten for free under a new proposal Wednesday, May 12, 2021, from Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration, part of a broad new education spending package made possible by the state's surprise budget surplus. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File) JAE C. HONG AP

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a “total transformation” of public schools in America’s largest state Wednesday by offering pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, opening up college savings accounts for low-income students and offering universal after-school care in disadvantaged communities.

Newsom announced the measures as part of a broad new education spending package made possible by the state’s surprise budget surplus. The surplus means California has about $93.7 billion for public education this year, based on a voter-approved law. That’s $36 billion more than last year and $17.7 billion more than the governor’s initial estimate in January.

Newsom’s plan aims to address many of the inequities that the coronavirus pandemic exposed, he said, including the need for robust mental health services to address childhood depression and trauma, more teachers and higher teacher-student ratios.

“People don’t start behind, they are left behind,” Newsom said during a news conference at a Monterey elementary school. “We are looking to transform — not go back to where we were — but transform our education system.”

Anticipating a massive budget deficit this year because of the pandemic, Newsom and the state's legislative leaders agreed on a budget last year that raised taxes and cut spending, including delaying more than $12.5 billion in payments to public school districts.

But the pandemic mostly affected lower-wage workers, while those with higher salaries kept their jobs and kept paying taxes. Combined with a surging stock market and the state’s progressive tax structure, Newsom announced Monday that the state would have a $76 billion surplus.

The surplus is good timing for Newsom, who will face a recall election later this year fueled by anger over his handling of the pandemic. Newsom has announced a bonanza of new spending proposals, including returning $8.1 billion to taxpayers in the form of tax rebates and spending $12 billion to tackle the state’s homelessness problem.

Newsom’s K-12 education plan would eventually open California’s two-year transitional kindergarten program to all students starting at age 4. The proposal fulfills a promise by Newsom and legislative leaders to pay for universal 4-year-old kindergarten in California.

About 91,000 students are enrolled in transitional kindergarten right now, which would increase to about 250,000 by the 2024-2025 if Newsom's plan is approved.

Previous proposals have concerned some local school officials who worried they would run out of teachers. Teacher retirements increased 26% during the second half of 2020, according to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. A state survey found that 56% of those who retired cited the difficulty of teaching during the coronavirus pandemic.

Newsom’s plan would address that problem by giving $1.1 billion to some school districts to hire more staff. To be eligible for the money, at least 55% of a district’s enrollment would have to be either low-income students, children learning English as a second language or kids in foster care.

Senior education and health officials who joined Newsom Wednesday praised the plan's emphasis on promoting mental health, dedicating more than $4 billion to help identify and treat mental health needs early in children and adults up to 25 years old.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond shared a trauma from his childhood, saying he was raised in Monterey until his mother died when he was six and sent to live 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) away to be raised by a cousin.

In the 1970s, when Thurmond was growing up, there wasn’t much discussion about how to address trauma in students, he said. “I can’t think of anything more important than how we address the social emotional needs of our students,” Thurmond said.

The governor's plan requires support from the Democratically controlled state Legislature, which has until June 15 to pass a spending plan for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

The governor’s plan allocates $3.3 billion to expand incentive programs for teachers, including expanding $20,000 grants for teachers who volunteer to work in high-needs schools.

Newsom also wants to pay for an after-school program and six weeks of summer school for districts with high concentrations of low-income students, children learning to speak English and kids in foster care. The programs would be available for students up to 6th grade.

“For many families, schools are a place where they get food, they get health care, they get social services. It’s acknowledging that schools are no longer a place where we just get educated, they’re really a community hub for many of our neighborhoods,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, a Democrat from San Francisco and chair of the Assembly Budget Committee.

Those programs would eventually be available to about one in three public school students, or 2.1 million children, for an annual cost of about $5 billion once it's fully implemented, his administration said.

Newsom’s plan to establish universal access to transitional kindergarten would not mean parents have to send their 4-year-olds to school. But school districts would have to offer it, with more children becoming eligible for kindergarten each year until it's fully implemented in the 2024-25 school year. The Newsom administration says it will cost $2.7 billion per year by that time.

California is also scheduled to get billions in coronavirus aid funding from the $1.9 trillion relief package President Joe Biden signed.

Newsom wants to use $2.1 billion of that money to start college savings accounts for students from low-income families and students who are learning to speak English or are in foster care, from $500 to $1,000 per student.

Chicago Police Started Secret Drone Program Using Untraceable Cash: Report

Matt Novak
GIZMONDO

12/5/2021

The Chicago Police Department started a secret drone program using untraceable money seized in drug raids and other criminal investigations, according to a bombshell new report from the Chicago Sun-Times.

The drone program is reportedly used for crime scene photos and terrorism-related issues, among other investigations, according to internal Chicago Police Department emails obtained by activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets and reviewed by the Sun-Times.

The emails, sent by Karen Conway, director of Chicago’s police research and development, indicate roughly $7.7 million was spent on operating expenses for various programs in the city using off-the-books cash, though it’s not clear how much of that money was invested in drones. The money, so-called “1505 funds,” is used on plenty of other shady police stuff like Stingrays for cellphone tracking.

Chicago’s police corruption and abuse of power was infamous in the 20th century, but reached new heights in the past decade after it was revealed the CPD operated a black site in the city where torture and extrajudicial interrogations were conducted. And revelations about how Chicago is funding a secret drone program through unaccountable funds is almost predictable, given the history of Chicago politics.

When asked about the drone program, Chicago Police told the Sun-Times that they investigate “every tool available” as well as any “innovative opportunities” for maintaining “public safety.”

“CPD has strict guidelines for all tools and programs to ensure individual privacy, civil rights, civil liberties and other interests are protected,” a CPD spokesperson told the Sun-Times. “We also meet with community partners to make certain that all enforcement efforts meet the highest standards and have support among the individuals Chicago police officers are sworn to serve and protect.”

The entire report is available at the Chicago Sun-Times.

FORMER LIBERAL MP MARTHA HALL FINDLAY

UK Government Gives ‘Climate Champion’ Award to Executive at Massive Canadian Oil Company

Molly Taft
GIZMONDO

12/5/2021


The stuff of champions. Photo: Mark Ralston (Getty Images)

“Climate champion” and producing more than 10 million barrels of tar sands oil a year are not exactly synonymous in most people’s minds. But that’s the exact title the British government decided to bestow on an executive at one of the most powerful oil companies in Canada.

To mark six months until the major climate conference in Glasgow, the UK government honored 26 “climate champions” working in Canada, a commonwealth nation. Among the list of “champions” is Martha Hall Findlay, who serves as the chief sustainability officer at Suncor, a major tar sands player. An accompanying “storybook” of all the chosen climate champions includes Findlay’s resume as well as a quote attributed to her: “Suncor fully supports Canada’s Paris Agreement commitments, and we look forward to COP26 to continue building the all-important collaboration among the private sector, governments and other organizations needed to find real solutions.”

The choices for climate champions weren’t made by any member of Canada’s robust climate activist community, but rather by the British High Commission in Canada and the Canada Climate Law Initiative. Climate Home, which first reported last week, reports they won’t have any formal role at COP itself. And Findlay herself certainly has an impressive resume—there’s nothing in there at first glance that’s a red flag (outside the working for an oil company thing), and I’m sure she’s a nice lady. But the cognitive dissonance of appointing an executive at one of the dirtiest companies in the world as a climate champion is pretty jarring.

Suncor may not be as recognizable a name to American readers as Exxon or Chevron, but its hands are plenty dirty. The company is the top global producer of tar sands oil. Alberta is the epicenter of tar sands production, and the operations there form the largest industrial project in the world. Tar sands are also wildly polluting, resulting in three times the emissions as regular ol’ crude production. While Suncor rakes in money from its oil sands operations—it’s the second biggest energy company in Canada—its product has made it a challenge for Canada to meet its climate goals. In fact, Canadian greenhouse gas emissions rose slightly in 2019 due to more oil and gas extraction even as other developed nations have seen theirs fall in recent years.

Like many of the world’s fossil fuel companies who are trying to earn brownie points for helping us stave off the climate disaster they caused, Suncor’s website presents a squeaky-clean image of a corporation that is Committed To Acting On Climate. “Suncor accepts the scientific consensus, publicly stating that ‘climate change is happening and we need to take action,’” its climate page reads. Links to the company’s various sustainability reports detail its plan to reduce emissions 30% over the next decade and it aims to “embed low-carbon thinking into the day-to-day activities and decisions of our employees” (whatever that means). Suncor is in favor of Canada’s national price on carbon—a common show of support among oil companies—and its then-CEO in 2018 dragged politicians who dabble in climate denial.

Suncor has also worked hard to cultivate its relationships with Indigenous and First Nations groups, many of whom are on the front lines of the environmental devastation from the impacts of oil sands extraction and who have led public campaigns and lawsuits against other tar sands companies, like the owners of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. In 2019, Bloomberg called the company “an industry leader when it comes to business partnerships with Indigenous groups.” (One of Findlay’s listed duties, according to the company’s website, is being “responsible for the continued deepening of the company’s Indigenous, stakeholder, and community relations.”)

All of this is great for Suncor, but, as the old adage goes, you can put lipstick on a pig—it’s still a pig. There are oil companies that are doing better than others at trying to clean up some of the mess they’ve made—and Suncor looks like it’s doing its homework to become the best little oil company it can be. Indeed, the industry as a whole has made concerted efforts over the past year to right its sinking PR ship, introducing confusing terms like “carbon management company” and “net-zero oil” to help buy them a little time to keep polluting.

At the end of the day, however, like Exxon, Chevron, and all the others, Suncor is still a company that produces an enormous amount of oil each year, with no plans to stop soon, despite our ticking carbon clock. People who work for the company, no matter how noble their intentions or how embedded their “low-carbon thinking” is, are helping further that goal. If these are the kinds of “climate champions” that governments are honoring as the world prepares to gather for what will be a crucial climate conference to hammer out details of the Paris Agreement, we may be in trouble.
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Molly Taft
Writing about climate change, renewable energy, and Big Oil/Big Gas/Big Everything for Earther. Formerly of the Center for Public Integrity & Nexus Media News. I'm very tall & have a very short dog.

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Martha Hall Findlay

Member of the Canadian House of Commons

Interesting storiesCareerEarly life

Martha Hall Findlay is a Canadian businesswoman, entrepreneur, lawyer and politician from Toronto, Ontario, who was recently president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank, and is now senior vice-president and chief sustainability officer with Suncor Energy. Previously, she was elected to the House of Commons of Canada as the Liberal Party of Canada's candidate in the Toronto riding of Willowdale in a federal by-election held on March 17, 2008, to fill a vacancy created by former Liberal MP Jim Peterson's resignation. She was re-elected in the 2008 general election but lost her seat in the 2011 election.

CLIMATE CHANGE
The Fight to Define What ‘Clean’ Energy Means

Dharna Noor
GIZMONDO

12/5/2021

These are clean energy. Environmentalists don’t agree on what else is.

Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)

After four years of backsliding under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. is back to increasing its climate ambitions. But there’s a fight brewing over what exactly constitutes zero-carbon energy, showing that challenges decarbonization faces.

President Joe Biden has proposed a clean electricity standard to reduce emissions, and various proposals and bills would create one for the U.S. On Wednesday, though, 650 organizations including Climate Justice Alliance, Greenpeace, Food and Water Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Friends of the Earth sent an open letter to Congress asking it to eschew the clean electricity standard proposals and take another route to clean energy, known as a renewable electricity standard, instead.

If you’re confused, I don’t blame you—the terms “clean” and “renewable” for energy are often used interchangeably. But in this case, while the CES defines non-polluting energy as anything that falls under a certain pollution standard, the RES simply lists out forms of energy that count. The letter calls for a bill that would require the U.S. to solely use renewable sources—defined as wind, solar, and geothermal—to meet its carbon-free electricity needs by 2030. That’s five years ahead of Biden’s current timeline in addition to the only renewables requirement.


“One of the most basic and important questions of climate policy is how you define clean energy,” said Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth while noting that “definitions matter.”


Capitol Hill has seen a number of CES proposals. One that the letter specifically cites, the CLEAN Future Act of 2021, sets a metric of “clean” as any source that results in less than 0.82 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per megawatt hour of energy. (Carbon dioxide-equivalent is a metric that normalizes other types of greenhouse gas emissions, some of which are more potent, to carbon dioxide.) That standard would disqualify coal but allow most gas. Past legislative proposals have included standards that are twice as strict, but an analysis by Friends of the Earth found that even under those, “fewer than 1% of gas-powered facilities would be excluded from qualifying for the standard.”

Disagreements over whether a RES or CES are preferable aren’t new. In fact, CES policies came out of attempts to compromise in the late 2000s, when they were billed an alternative to a renewable portfolio standard that could include things like “clean coal” and natural gas.

Today, coal is all but dead thanks mostly to market shifts. The fight over these limits is largely one about natural gas, which while less polluting than other energy sources like coal, still results in greenhouse gas emissions when dug up and burned. It’s also the number one contributor to the increase in U.S. carbon pollution in 2019.

“A CES does not need to include fossil gas and it shouldn’t,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

That could, however, come with one caveat—gas producers could use carbon capture and sequestration technology to suck up their emissions. A recent report from Evergreen Action and Data for Progress that Stokes co-authored lays out a stringent CES that only gives credits to gas if it is paired with carbon capture technology. Existing forms and techniques to capture carbon suck up only 0.1% of global emissions. But technological developments could, in theory, make CCS possible. The vast majority of modeling scenarios to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) also require at least some form of CCS. Scientists also generally disagree about if the world can transition to solely renewable energy by 2030.

Yet CCS falls under what the groups opposed to the CES call “false solutions.” Among the issues are the high costs to build carbon capture facilities and the fact that it fails to address methane emissions and other forms of air pollution tied with natural gas. And further, the groups argue that the mere inclusion of natural gas of any kind in a CES would send a signal to the industry that it’s okay for it to continue writing gas expansion into its business plans.

“If you look at the at the business models that are continuing to be promoted by Shell, BP, and particularly by Exxon, those business models even to this day, show continued growth in natural gas production and consumption and the thing that makes it magically disappear, is CCS,” Caroll Muffett, ‎president of the Center for International Environmental Law, said.

There’s also, of course, the question of political viability to going 100% renewable. Even with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House, passing policies to decarbonize the grid won’t be easy, let alone a RES. With the filibuster in place, Evergreen Action and Data for Progress have argued that the best way to pass a CES is to use the complex process of reconciliation, which allows a simple majority of the Senate to pass legislation. This would still require conservative Democrats’ support, namely Sen. Joe Manchin, who’s sent mixed signals on whether or not he’d support such legislation. A CES that includes gas, with or without carbon capture, could be more likely to get him on board.

But for the RES advocates, that’s simply too big a compromise to make. Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that’s especially true for frontline communities who live in the communities where natural gas plants, carbon capture pipelines, biomass plants, or other polluting infrastructure are sited.

“We need to shift the conversation from what is feasible to what is necessary. The climate emergency is a ticking time bomb, and we have no time to embrace electricity standards that lock in decades of dangerous gas and reinforce our profoundly racist and ecocidal energy system,” she said.

Ultimately, the difference between CES advocates’ vision and that of RES advocates’ seems to be this question of compromise. While the former are concerned about acting quickly to pass something that could usher in a better yet imperfect energy system, RES advocates fear that buckling on these key issues renders the project too weak and all too easy for the fossil fuel industry to co-opt.

“We believe that Congress is basically going to have one shot at getting this done and that they need to get it done right,” Mitch Jones, policy director of Food and Water Watch, said.

MUSK GASLIGHTING

Tesla Says It Will No Longer Accept Bitcoin for Car Payments, Citing Fossil Fuel Concerns

Brianna Provenzano
GIZMONDO 12/5/2021

Tesla has “suspended vehicle purchases using bitcoin,” CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday night, allegedly out of concern over the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.”

In the statement, which quickly went viral, Musk said that while cryptocurrency is a “good idea on many levels,” the resource-intensive nature of Bitcoin mining — which frequently relies on dirty power sources like coal — has caused the company to hit pause on its role in future transactions.

“Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy,” Musk wrote. “We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction.”

The stress that Bitcoin mining has put on the planet has become undeniable in recent years as the amount of energy required to mine the cryptocurrency has soared. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the currency’s energy use recently surpassed the annual footprint of Argentina. Around the world, countries are beginning to take note: In March, China’s Inner Mongolia province unveiled plans to halt all new bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining ventures in order to reduce electricity consumption for its already beleaguered grid

But long after the devastating environmental implications associated with Bitcoin became apparent, tech honchos like Musk and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey continued to praise it as an environmentally friendly boon to the future of renewable energy. On April 21 — just one day shy of Earth Day — Dorsey’s company, Square, released a white paper in conjunction with CEO Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest that made a convoluted argument for an ecosystem in which “solar/wind, batteries, and bitcoin mining co-exist to form a green grid that runs almost exclusively on renewable energy.” Dorsey retweeted the claims, and Musk simply replied, “True.”

So it’s odd, to say the least, that less than a month after touting Bitcoin’s green bonafides, Musk would be realigning his company’s balance sheets in the name of saving the environment from dirty, fossil fuel-boosting crypto. It’s certainly something that he himself has a vested interest in: In a February SEC filing, it was revealed that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, and was mulling plans to invest in more crypto coins down the line.

The prominent vote of confidence from Tesla sent share prices for the most popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Musk’s personal favorite, Dogecoin, skyrocketing at the time of the announcement. Then last week, after a cringeworthy Saturday Night Live appearance where Musk referred to Dogecoin as a “hustle,” prices abruptly dipped again, to the tune of about a third.

Whatever Musk’s intentions are, it’s at least abundantly clear by now that the system is rigged so that when he says jump, the stock prices jump — or vice-versa. Seems like my guy is anti–Italian American Wario-laughing all the way to the bank.

V'GER

Voyager 1 detects a hum in interstellar space

Posted by Kelly Kizer Whitt in SPACE | May 12, 2021

Now 8 years into its travels in the deep reaches of space between the stars, Voyager 1 has detected a faint, low-level hum. It stems from the vibration of the plasma, or ionized gas, in interstellar space.


Voyager 1 is said to have sailed out of our solar system in 2012, when it crossed the heliopause into interstellar space. Image via NASA.

Voyager 1 left Earth in 1977 and crossed the boundary of our sun’s magnetic influence (the heliopause) in 2012. It’s now traveling in the vastness of interstellar space – the space between the stars – and is, at present, the most distant human-made object from us. Interstellar space isn’t quite as empty as a vacuum, and a team of scientists announced on May 10, 2021, that Voyager 1 has now sent back a message, saying it’s detected a faint, monotonous hum of interstellar gas (plasma). Astronomer Stella Koch Ocker of Cornell University led the study and, in a statement, described Voyager 1’s discovery:

It’s very faint and monotone, because it is in a narrow-frequency bandwidth. We’re detecting the faint, persistent hum of interstellar gas.

The study was published May 10, 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.

Astronomer Stella Koch Ocker led the study leading to the discovery of a low-level hum in interstellar space. Image via Cornell University.

Although Voyager 1 is traveling in interstellar space, it still feels some influence from the solar wind, a stream of charged particles from our sun. This stream from our sun is no longer the dominant force affecting Voyager 1, however; similar “winds” from other stars mix in. As Voyager 1 reads its environment, it allows scientists to understand how the interstellar medium and solar wind interact and how the the bubble of the solar system’s heliosphere is shaped by external forces.

Voyager 1 has an instrument called a Plasma Wave System, which has been detecting larger eruptions from the sun that affect the plasma, or ionized gas, in interstellar space. It’s when the eruptions are quiet that there’s a background hum. Team member James Cordes of Cornell University described the hum not as an annoying drone, but as something much more pleasant:

The interstellar medium is like a quiet or gentle rain. In the case of a solar outburst, it’s like detecting a lightning burst in a thunderstorm and then it’s back to a gentle rain.

The low-level hum let scientists track how interstellar plasma is distributed in the space through which Voyager 1 is passing. That’s huge! We’ve never had a spacecraft so far from Earth before and so never before could obtain this sort of direct measurement. Team member Shami Chatterjee of Cornell University explained how the hum helps scientists learn more about the interstellar plasma:

We’ve never had a chance to evaluate it. Now we know we don’t need a fortuitous event related to the sun to measure interstellar plasma. Regardless of what the sun is doing, Voyager is sending back detail. The craft is saying, ‘Here’s the density I’m swimming through right now. And here it is now. And here it is now. And here it is now.’ Voyager is quite distant and will be doing this continuously.

Voyager 1 is 14 billion miles (22.5 billion km) from Earth. The signals it sends back to us require nearly an entire earthly day to travel back to Earth. In other words, Voyager 1 is nearly 1 light-day away. For this spacecraft launched in 1977 to still be working outside our solar system and transmitting data is a truly stupendous achievement. Ocker said:


Scientifically, this research is quite a feat. It’s a testament to the amazing Voyager spacecraft. It’s the engineering gift to science that keeps on giving

This artist’s concept shows Voyager 1 leaving the solar system and the greater influence of solar particles and entering interstellar space. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Bottom line: Voyager 1 has detected a faint, monotonous hum from plasma (ionized gas) in interstellar space.

Source: Persistent plasma waves in interstellar space detected by Voyager 1

Via Cornell University

   

DIRECT ACTION GETS THE GOODS

Apple reportedly fires Antonio Garcia Martinez after employee backlash

By Mike Peterson | May 13, 2021

Apple has reportedly fired Antonio Garcia Martinez after an employee backlash over sexist comments that he made in his book "Chaos Monkeys."

The newly hired engineer is "gone from Apple after employee backlash," the company confirmed to Bloomberg on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Apple employees began circulating a petition that called for an investigation into Garcia Martinez's hiring.

"At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here," Apple said in a statement to Bloomberg.

In their petition to Eddy Cue, the Apple employees said that Antonio Garcia's hiring "calls into question parts of our system of inclusion at Apple, including hiring panels, background checks, and our process to ensure our existing culture of inclusion is strong enough to withstand individuals who don't share our inclusive values."

Specifically, employees expressed concerns about Garcia Martinez's views about women and people of color. One passage from "Chaos Monkeys," which was circulated on Twitter, called women in the Bay Area "soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit."

Apple had hired Garcia Martinez to work on its ad platforms product engineering team in April. The Cupertino-based division works on advertising systems within the App Store, Apple News, and elsewhere.


Apple staffers demand investigation into recent 'misogynistic' hire

By Mike Peterson | May 12, 2021


A group of Apple employees are calling for an investigation into the recent hiring of former Facebook ad manager Antonio Garcia Martinez, citing concerns about "misogynistic statements" that he made.

According to a circulating petition that the staffers signed, Garcia Martinez's hiring "calls into question parts of our system of inclusion at Apple, including hiring panels, background checks, and our process to ensure our existing culture of inclusion is strong enough to withstand individuals who don't share our inclusive values."

In the petition, first seen by The Verge, the employees expressed concerns about Garcia Martinez's views on women and people of color. They cite passages from "Chaos Monkeys," an autobiography about Garcia Martinez's work in Silicon Valley, and comments from interviews with the former Facebook ad products executive.

For example, one quote from the book that's being shared on Twitter calls women in the Bay Area "soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit."

Garcia Martinez was hired to join Apple's ad platforms product engineering team, works on advertising technology within the App Store and in other places like Apple News and the Stocks app. He will be based in Cupertino.

The petition calls for an investigation into how Garcia Martinez's "published views on women and people of color were missed or ignored, along with a clear plan of action to prevent this from happening again."

Apple says that diversity is one of its core values. According to its latest diversity report, women made up 34% of Apple's total workforce in 2020. The share of Asian workers also increased to 27%, up from 23% in 2018.

The full text of the letter, which started circulating on Wednesday, can be seen below.

We are deeply concerned about the recent hiring of Antonio Garcia Martinez. His misogynistic statements in his autobiography — such as "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit" (further quoted below this letter) — directly oppose Apple's commitment to Inclusion & Diversity. We are profoundly distraught by what this hire means for Apple's commitment to its inclusion goals, as well as its real and immediate impact on those working near Mr. Garcia Martinez. It calls into question parts of our system of inclusion at Apple, including hiring panels, background checks, and our process to ensure our existing culture of inclusion is strong enough to withstand individuals who don't share our inclusive values.

It is concerning that the views Mr. Garcia Martinez expresses in his 2016 book Chaos Monkeys were overlooked — or worse, excused — during his background check or hiring panel. We demand an investigation into how his published views on women and people of color were missed or ignored, along with a clear plan of action to prevent this from happening again.

Inclusion isn't just about who we hire; it's also about how we support everyone who already works at Apple. Given Mr. Garcia Martinez's history of publishing overtly racist and sexist remarks about his former colleagues, we are concerned that his presence at Apple will contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public harassment and private bullying. We are entitled to insight into how the People team intends to mitigate this risk.

Further, the explicit, conscious biases expressed in Mr. Garcia Martinez's writing will continue to slow our I&D progress as long as they are tolerated by those with the power to affect hiring decisions and career trajectories. At a minimum, we demand assurance that Mr. Garcia Martinez and any who share his harmful views will not be involved in hiring, interviewing, or performance decisions during their tenures at Apple.

Finally, we expect and deserve a transparent, intentional, and detailed strategy from Apple to ensure our culture of inclusion is strong enough to protect our team members against biases like these that ANY new hire brings. Our training calls attention to the unconscious biases that contradict our stated values, but no amount of training can inspire a commitment to inclusion in someone who objects to its basic premise.

We have included a selection of direct quotes below this letter from Chaos Monkeys and interviews with Mr. Garcia Martinez that showcase some of the statements he's made. We are aware that Mr. Martinez has claimed that the quote above is taken out of context, but the full passage is no less harmful. We are also aware that Mr. Martinez has attempted to distance himself from these statements by claiming that they represent widely held attitudes in the tech industry. This is not a tenable position. In reproducing these harmful stereotypes, and in materially benefiting from them, Mr. Martinez shows himself to be a participant in this culture and only furthers the sexism and racism that our I&D initiatives are working to counteract.

Thank you for hearing our concerns. We look forward to your response regarding Apple's plans to continue moving toward a more inclusive workspace.


Update 6:45 p.m. Eastern Time: Antonio Garcia Martinez is "gone from Apple," the company confirmed to Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Meet America's Newest Chess Master,

 10-Year-Old Tanitoluwa Adewumi


May 11, 2021

Heard on All Things Considered

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Tanitoluwa Adewumi, pictured in 2019, just became the newest national chess master in the U.S. at age 10.Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Tanitoluwa Adewumi, a 10-year-old in New York, just became the country's newest national chess master.

At the Fairfield County Chess Club Championship tournament in Connecticut on May 1, Adewumi won all four of his matches, bumping his chess rating up to 2223 and making him the 28th youngest person to become a chess master, according to US Chess.

"I was very happy that I won and that I got the title," he says, "I really love that I finally got it."

ARTS & LIFE
This Young Chess Champion Is 'Not Scared Of Anything On That Board'

"Finally" is after about three years — the amount of time that Adewumi has been playing chess. When he started, Adewumi and his family were living in a homeless shelter in Manhattan after fleeing religious persecution by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in their home country of Nigeria.

Now, Adewumi practices chess "every day" after school for "10, 11 hours" — and still manages to get some sleep.

His hours of practice have paid off. As a chess player, he describes himself as a bit of an every man, "aggressive" or "calm" when he needs to be, and always thinking ahead.
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"On a normal position, I can do up to 20 moves [in advance]", he says. Keeping all of the pieces straight in his head might seem like a challenge but Adewumi says it's a skill that "when you master, it just keeps coming back."

Adewumi competes against other chess players at all levels. But his favorite match?

"I guess Hikaru Nakamura is my favorite person I've ever played," he says. "He's a grandmaster, a very strong one. He's on the top of the rankings."

Nakamura won that match. But Adewumi takes each loss in stride — and there's always the possibility of a comeback.

"I say to myself that I never lose, that I only learn," he says. "Because when you lose, you have to make a mistake to lose that game. So you learn from that mistake, and so you learn [overall]. So losing is the way of winning for yourself."

Since the last time NPR spoke with Adewumi, his family moved out of the shelter and he's written a book about his life called My Name Is Tani . . . and I Believe in Miracles. That book has been optioned for a Trevor Noah-produced film adaptation with a script by The Pursuit of Happyness screenwriter Steven Conrad.

But Adewumi's journey is not over yet. He says his goal is to become the world's youngest grandmaster. At 10 years 8 months, he has a little under two years to beat the current record holder, Sergey Karjakin, who gained his title at 12 years 7 months.

Karen Zamora and Amy Isackson produced and edited the audio story. Cyrena Touros adapted it for Web.

For Some Anti-Vaccine Advocates, Misinformation Is Part Of A Business

May 12, 2021
GEOFF BRUMFIEL

 

Transcript

Anti-vaccine advocates are using the COVID-19 pandemic to promote books, supplementals and services.Emilija Manevska/Getty Images

Sayer Ji is a 48-year-old proponent of what he calls natural medicine.

"My parents didn't know about natural medicine, so it really wasn't until I was 17 that I learned some basic principles of nutrition and self care," he told attendees at a recent virtual conference. "I was liberated from needing pharmaceutical medicines."

Ji was also there promoting his website, full of natural remedies and reams of anti-vaccine misinformation. He sells subscriptions for anywhere from $75 to $850 a year.

He is one of many anti-vaccine advocates with a business on the side. They promote false claims about the dangers vaccines pose, while selling treatments, supplementals or other services. Their potential market is the roughly 20% of Americans say they do not want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to recent polling.

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Health experts worry that the misinformation being spread is doing real damage. Without sufficient vaccination, communities could see a resurgence of the virus, particularly in the coming fall and winter months.

Ji has spent years pushing scientifically disproven views about vaccines and other conventional medical treatments, but the coronavirus pandemic gave him and others in the anti-vaccine community a new set of talking points. "This is the new medical apartheid, this is the new biosegregation that they want to roll out across the world," he warned of the vaccination campaigns during a lengthy Facebook video posted earlier this year.

"COVID was the opportunity," says Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit group that tracks anti-vaccination misinformation. "COVID generated a lot of anxiety and conspiracies and misinformation thrive where there is anxiety."

As people have searched online for information on the virus and vaccines, Ji and others have upped their rhetoric, while continuing to promote their books, workshops and other products. Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows it can work, as 147 key anti-vaccination accounts have managed to grow their followings by at least 25% since the start of the pandemic.

And Ahmed believes for those with something to sell, anti-vaccine misinformation serves a second important purpose.

"One of the things that antivaxxers have to do to sell their own remedies ... is to persuade people not to trust authorities they've trusted in the past," Ahmed says.

By using their debunked theories to turn people away from mainstream medicine, these entrepreneurs are creating customers: "Once they've managed to hook someone, they can then sell to them for a lifetime."

That selling can be big business. One of the leading anti-vaccine advocates, Joseph Mercola, is believed to bring in millions each year through his companies, which sell an array of branded natural supplements, beauty products and even pet supplies. In a written statement to NPR, Mercola's company said he "rejects your biased accusation of promoting misinformation."

Separately, in an interview with NPR, Sayer Ji denied that his website was a major source of income.

"I mean I'm a published author, so I encourage people listening to buy my book if they're interested. How about that. So there it is, I've just promoted something, I'm a shill for the anti-vax industry," he said.

"Ultimately, my point though is that I work for a living, and I always have very hard."

He says his primary motive is to provide information to anyone interested in reading it.

Promoting products is not always a cynical move, says Kolina Koltai, a researcher who studies the anti-vaccine movement at the University of Washington. She believes that many are sincere in their beliefs about vaccines.

"If you really want to make that your life's mission, you need to make income somehow," she says. "We live in this capitalist society."

Regardless of motivation, she believes that money is a major part of a feedback loop that continues to drive vaccine misinformation on social media. The extended public health crisis has created a marketing opportunity that "just gives you more and more followers and more and more money."

Ahmed adds that while the anti-vaccine community's self-made personalities resemble others who have proliferated in the age of social media influencers, the potential damage they can cause is real. "Someone who's promoting lipstick isn't going to lead to us not being able to contain a pandemic that's already taken half-a-million lives [in America]," he says.

But the crisis is also bringing more scrutiny to anti-vaccine promoters. Sayer Ji's Instagram account was suspended in April after he repeatedly posted misleading and false information. Other anti-vaccine advocates have toned down their rhetoric on large platforms like Facebook. Koltai says losing these accounts could pose a threat to their livelihoods.

"When they get kicked off of their social media platforms I do think they take a major hit to their business models," she says.

On May 4, Mercola announced that he would remove all information on COVID-19 from his website. In a lengthy post, he cited threats against him as the reason, rather than business or legal considerations. As of May 10, many posts about COVID-19 still appeared on the site.

For his part, Ji says the biggest hit to his web traffic actually came before the pandemic, in 2019, when Google changed its search algorithms to hide anti-vaccine sites like his.

And he says he doesn't worry much about the financial implications of getting kicked off social media sites either.

"Social media deplatforming? Give me a break," he says. "We have hundreds of thousands and millions of followers out there, in part because we do a really good job of providing information that people want."

His company's Facebook account continues to promote vaccine misinformation to half-a-million followers. And lately he has added a big red stamp to it that reads "censored."

Revamped EPA website shows increased climate change risks

By MATTHEW DALY
11/5/2021

EPA Administrator Michael Regan speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Wednesday, May 12, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a gap of more than four years, the Environmental Protection Agency is relaunching a website highlighting evidence of climate change in the United States, including rising temperatures, increased ocean acidity, sea level rise, river flooding, droughts, heat waves and wildfires.

EPA unveiled the revamped website on Climate Change Indicators on Wednesday, calling it a “comprehensive resource” that presents clear and compelling evidence of changes to the climate. The website was effectively suspended under President Donald Trump, who did not allow information on the site to be updated and who repeatedly disputed or downplayed the effects of climate change.

“There is no small town, big city or rural community that is unaffected by the climate crisis,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said Wednesday. “Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close, with increasing regularity.”

Unlike Trump, President Joe Biden calls climate change an existential threat to the planet and has made slowing global warming a top priority of his administration. He led a virtual global summit on climate change from the White House last month.

The Biden administration revived the climate change website and added some new measures, pulling information from government agencies, universities and other sources.

Regan called the revamped website “a crucial scientific resource that underscores the urgency for action on the climate crisis,” adding: “With this long overdue update, we now have additional data and a new set of indicators that show climate change has become even more evident, stronger, and extreme.″

Regan said it’s “imperative that we take meaningful action” to address climate change.

The new indicators show that 2020 was the second-warmest year on record, after 2016, and that Arctic sea ice was the second smallest on record last year.

The website also shows that heat waves are occurring more often across the United States, from an average of two heat waves per year during the 1960s to six per year during the 2010s.

Sea levels rose along much of the U.S. coastline between 1960 and 2020, particularly the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Gulf Coast, where some reporting stations registered increases of more than 8 inches, the EPA said.

Coastal flooding also is becoming more frequent, especially along the East and Gulf Coasts, while the average length of the growing season in the lower 48 states increased by more than two weeks since the beginning of the 20th century.

EPA said it worked with partners from dozens of government agencies, academic institutions and other organizations to develop the climate change indicators. Each indicator was peer reviewed by independent experts.

The revamped site also features interactive data exploration tools with graphs, maps and figures, along with an overview of the climate change indicators and climate change’s effects on human health and the environment.