350 Kingston resumes weekly climate strike

Author of the article:Brigid Goulem

Publishing date:Jul 02, 2021 •

Members of 350 Kingston protest on Princess Street on Friday, July 3, 2021, calling for meaningful and immediate action on climate change. PHOTO BY BRIGID GOULEM /The Whig-Standard

The town of Lytton, B.C., burned to the ground earlier this week following days of record-smashing heat and severe wildfires so large they developed pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which produced wind and lightning and started more fires.

In the face of such a catastrophic climate event, climate activists with 350 Kingston are resuming their weekly Fridays for Future climate strikes outside Tara’s Foods to call for immediate and meaningful action on climate change at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

Jude Larkin, an organizer with 350 Kingston, explained that now that much of the risk of COVID-19 has subsided, the group is recommitting to addressing the growing climate crisis.

Larkin is concerned that governments are not taking action and is calling for government budgets that reflect the urgency of the issue.

“I’m most concerned that we’re not taking any action. You have to spend money proportionate to the size of the crisis. For instance, in Vancouver, 7 per cent of their municipal budget is climate,” she said in an interview with the Whig-Standard.

Despite mounting evidence of the immediate and catastrophic consequences of climate change, Larkin says the Canadian government continues to increase emissions and prioritize economic projects.

“Canada is one of the worst countries for increasing our emissions. Other countries have gone down, but we have steadily gone up and it’s because of the tarsands. We need to cancel all fossil fuel projects immediately,” she said.

Larkin is calling for a shift away from climate policies that focus on incentives and towards the implementation of mandatory changes.

“It can’t just be incentives to buy electric cars. There needs to be a commitment that there will be no more (internal combustion) cars after 2025,” she said.

Fellow activist Floyd Rudmin expressed concern that the Canadian government was investing too much money in military spending that could be directed towards meaningful climate action.

“If five million Canadians die in a week, it’s not going to be (because of) Russia; it’s going to be gigantic firestorms like in B.C. but in Toronto or Ottawa,” Rudmin said in an interview with the Whig-Standard.

Until they see meaningful action on climate change, the activists of 350 Kingston vow to be on the streets every Friday.

Video shows lightning strike as fire burns on Strawberry Hill

A number of fires have been ignited in the July 1 storm that rolled through Kamloops

Kamloops This Week
JULY 1, 2021 

A lightning strike hits the top of Strawberry Hill on July 1, igniting a fire at that spot. A lighting strike about 20 minutes earlier sparked the blaze to the right. There were two more lightning-ignited fires on the mountain above Highway 5, but all were eventually doused via Kamloops Fire Rescue Service work and Mother Nature's rain.

Photograph By CHRISTOPHER FOULDS/KTW

  

Protests delay inauguration of Chile's new constitutional assembly

By Aislinn Laing

© Reuters/PABLO SANHUEZA 

Chile's assembly holds first session to draft a new constitution

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - The swearing in of the architects of Chile's new constitution got off to an inauspicious start on Sunday after protests outside and inside the venue, and clashes with police forced a delay to the event.

© Reuters/PABLO SANHUEZA Chile's assembly holds first session to draft a new constitution

Problems arose after marches organised by independent, left-wing and indigenous groups fielding delegates for the constitutional body, as well as other interest groups, met heavily armed police manning barricades outside Santiago's former congress building where the ceremony is being held.

© Reuters/IVAN ALVARADO Chile's assembly holds first session to draft a new constitution

Scuffles broke out after some participants sought to overrun the barriers, prompting police to respond with tear gas and water canons.

Delegates inside the event then remonstrated with the organisers over heavy-handed police tactics, banging drums and shouting over a youth classical orchestra playing the national anthem.

Amid demands by delegates for "repressive" special forces police to be withdrawn, the electoral court official presiding over the ceremony agreed to suspend the event until midday.

The fracas underscores the intense challenges for the drafting of a new magna carta against a backdrop of deep divisions that still simmer after Chile was torn apart by massive protests that started in October 2019 over inequality and elitism and were fueled by a fierce police response.

© Reuters/IVAN ALVARADO Chile's assembly holds first session to draft a new constitution

The constitutional body is made up of 155 delegates, including 17 indigenous candidates, equally split between men and women, and was picked by a popular vote in May.

It is dominated by independent and leftist candidates, some with roots in the protest movement, with a smaller share of more conservative candidates backed by the current centre-right government.

Vale Miranda, at 20 the youngest constitutional delegate, wrote on Twitter that she and other delegates sought to stop heavy-handed security forces blocking protesters from marching.

© Reuters/PABLO SANHUEZA Chile's assembly holds first session to draft a new constitution

"Now they are hitting us and they just split my lip!" she said. "Let the whole world know that there is no democracy in Chile."


Marcela Cubillos, a candidate representing the government coalition, said the impasse was "a bad sign."

"Today should be the day that our important work starts, to comply with the mandate given to us by Chileans," she said.

Chileans voted overwhelmingly to tear up the current constitution drafted during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in a referendum last year.

The delegates have vowed to address topics including water and property rights, central bank independence and labour practices, prompting jitters among investors of potentially significant changes to the free market system of the world's top copper producer.

Before the ceremony began, Aymara and Mapuche delegates held spiritual ceremonies with song and dance in the downtown streets surrounding the body's new headquarters and on a nearby hillside.

Unrecognised in the current constitution, they are hoping a new text will afford their nations new cultural, political and social rights.

"We walk with our people and our history to open the gates they put before us," said Elisa Loncon, a Mapuche delegate and university professor who is seen as a candidate for presidency of the body.

MUTED GOVERNMENT

The government of centre-right President Sebastian Pinera stayed quiet as the events unfolded.

His coalition failed to secure the necessary one third of seats on the body to ward off drastic changes.

The inauguration is not the first sign of tensions in the process. Last month, when Pinera sought to remind delegates of the need not to overstep their remit, he was slapped down by some delegates who said they would set their own rules.

In recent weeks, there have been angry denunciations of government by delegates over budgets, COVID-19 rules around gathering size and who would preside over the ceremony.

The commission has up to a year to agree a common rulebook, establish committees and draft a new text.

Leandro Lima, a Southern Cone analyst for Control Risks, said the independents brought "legitimacy" to the process given Chileans' deep mistrust in established politics but a paucity of policymaking experience and deep ideological divisions could cause critical delays to the drafting of the text itself.

(Reporting by Aislinn Laing; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Journalist’s Months long Hunger Strike Points to Perils of Reporting in Morocco

Soulaimane Raissouni, who has been held without trial for over a year, is more than 80 days into a hunger strike

A protest calling for the release of the detained journalists Omar Radi and Soulaimane Raissouni in Rabat, Morocco, in May.Credit...Mosa'Ab Elshamy/Associated Press


By Nicholas Casey and Aida Alami
July 3, 2021


For years, Soulaimane Raissouni, a Moroccan newspaper editor, didn’t shy away from reporting on some of the most sensitive issues in the North African kingdom, including antigovernment protests that erupted in 2011 and 2016. But his criticism of how the authorities have handled the pandemic appeared to go too far.

A little over a year ago, he was arrested at his home in Casablanca after accusations of a sexual assault — allegations that he says are false and trumped up to intimidate him. Imprisoned ever since, he launched a hunger strike almost three months ago in protest.

On June 10, he appeared in court, emaciated and unable to walk without assistance. “Please take me back to prison to die,” he told the judge.

Mr. Raissouni is one of at least 10 Moroccan journalists who have been jailed in recent years, most of them accused of sex crimes and other acts deemed illegal in Morocco, including certain forms of abortion. Rights groups say the cases are being pursued by authorities whose true aim is to silence the country’s small cadre of independent journalists with false and politically motivated accusations.

All of the journalists detained had published articles about corruption or abuse of power within the kingdom, many of them targeting businesses or security officials with ties to King Mohammed VI.

Morocco, a constitutional monarchy in which the elected Parliament has little sway over the royal palace, has close ties to the United States and is a reliable ally in counterterrorism cooperation. But rights groups have long criticized the kingdom over its limits on freedom of expression and violations of human rights.

“The monarchy has asphyxiated the independent media when they became too critical,” said Abdeslam Maghraoui, a professor of political science at Duke University.

The Moroccan government said that Mr. Raissouni had been granted “all the guarantees of a fair trial” and that neither his prosecution nor those of other journalists were related to their work. It added that Mr. Raissouni had eaten at times in recent weeks and that “his state of health remains normal, despite a loss of weight.”

The government also said that his accusations of abuse were false, adding that representatives of rights groups had visited him in jail.



The journalist Hajar Raissouni, center, was convicted in 2019 on charges of having sex with her partner and of having an abortion. 'WHICH WAS THE WORSE CRIME'

Credit...Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Mr. Raissouni, 49, came of age during the years after King Mohammed VI ascended to the throne and promised greater openness. He was the editor of the newspaper Akhbar al-Yaoum, which shut down in March because of the imprisonment of its journalists and longstanding financial problems.

He and other well-known Moroccan journalists had made their names by investigating the previous king’s excesses. But as they turned their attention toward the new monarch, the tenor of the palace changed.

Democracy protests reached Morocco in 2011, and journalists increasingly became the target of security officials. Then, in 2016, the death of a fishmonger in the northern city of al-Hoceima — echoing a vegetable seller’s suicide in Tunisia that ignited the Arab Spring uprisings in late 2010 — set off Morocco’s largest protests in years. The authorities arrested hundreds of demonstrators and sentenced the movement’s leaders to years in jail.

Mr. Raissouni covered both movements despite deepening harassment of journalists covering the protests. And by the start of the pandemic, he was taking aim at what he deemed the government’s shoddy response to the coronavirus.

“More people are getting arrested than are getting tested for the virus,” he wrote in a column a couple of days before his arrest in May 2020, criticizing the powerful chief of Morocco’s security apparatus.

The police arrested Mr. Raissouni after a man claimed in a Facebook post to be the victim of an attempted sexual assault. The post did not name Mr. Raissouni but when the police summoned its author, he confirmed that he was accusing the journalist, according to documents.

Mr. Raissouni has denied the accusations and says the authorities used the accuser to set him up. In April, he began a hunger strike to protest the conditions in jail, which his lawyer said had included solitary confinement.

“Hunger strike is the most extreme form of protest,” Mr. Raissouni wrote last month in a public letter in which he said that officials in jail had beaten him. “Only one who has been a victim of a great injustice can undertake it.”

Mr. Raissouni is not the only journalist in Morocco who has faced accusations of sex crimes after publishing investigative work. Last July, Omar Radi, a freelance journalist who wrote about official corruption, was jailed on charges of espionage and rape and is now on trial.

In 2019, Hajar Raissouni, Mr. Raissouni’s niece who is a fellow journalist, was convicted on charges of having sex with her partner, whom she was not married to at the time, and of having an abortion — both of which are crimes in Morocco.

“I kept on thinking, ‘What did I do to deserve this? What happened to my dreams?’” said Ms. Raissouni, who left for Sudan after a royal pardon.

Omar Radi in Casablanca in March 2020. He was jailed on charges of espionage and rape and is now on trial.Credit...Youssef Boudlal/Reuters

In 2018, Akhbar al-Yaoum’s founder and publisher, Taoufik Bouachrine, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on sexual assault charges. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that the case was politically motivated, but the sentence was increased to 15 years in an appeal.

In a Washington Post opinion essay last year, Afaf Bernani, a former Akhbar al-Yaoum employee, said the police had tried to force her to falsely testify that Mr. Bouachrine had sexually assaulted her. When she refused, she was prosecuted on charges of perjury. She fled to Tunisia.

Experts say the cases reflect a dangerous dynamic for journalists more broadly in North Africa and the rest of the Arab world. Those dangers escalated during the Trump administration, when the American president expressed admiration for leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who use repressive tactics.

After U.S. intelligence officials concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia had ordered the assassination of the columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly expressed skepticism and sought even closer ties with Saudi Arabia. Rights advocates say that monarchs in places like Morocco took note.

Yet under the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a meeting with Morocco’s foreign minister in Rome last month and seemed to nod at the troubles for reporters in the kingdom. He tweeted about a need for “shared interest in regional peace and stability and human rights, including press freedom.”

Still, Mr. Raissouni’s wife, Kholoud Mokhtari, said nothing would persuade him to suspend his hunger strike.

“He is convinced that it is the only way he can obtain a fair trial and a provisional release,” she said. “My demand, as his wife, is that they release my husband. You have achieved your revenge. You have destroyed our lives.”

Morocco’s Jailing of Journalists

A Victim Not Only of Unjust Laws, but of ‘Unjust Authorities’
Nov. 15, 2019

Morocco’s King Pardons Journalist Sentenced on Abortion Charge
Oct. 16, 2019

Moroccan Journalist Sentenced to Prison for Abortion and Premarital Sex
Sept. 30, 2019

Nicholas Casey is the Madrid bureau chief, covering Spain, Portugal and Morocco. He spent a decade as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and the Middle East and wrote about national politics during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. @caseysjournal

A version of this article appears in print on July 4, 2021, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Morocco Hunger Strike Bares Journalists’ Peril. 

Frito Lay union members reject latest offer from management. A strike is set to begin Monday.

Andrew Bahl
Topeka Capital-Journal


Employees at Topeka's Frito Lay plant voted Saturday to reject a proposed labor contract with the company, paving the way for a strike to begin on Monday.

While workers had previously voted to go on strike last week, negotiations between Local 218 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union and PepsiCo, Frito Lay's parent company, had continued in a bid to reach a deal.

Union leadership and management reached a tentative, two-year deal this week but roughly 400 of its members voted it down after two days of voting, which culminated Saturday.

Union members have criticized the company for working conditions at the plant and have pressed for a pay hike in their next deal.

More:  Members of Topeka's local Frito-Lay union just voted to strike. Here's what we know.

Mark Benaka, business manager for Local 218, said the vote was "overwhelming" in its opposition to the proposed deal, which would have brought a 2% pay raise, as well as limits on mandatory overtime, among other items.

While Benaka noted management had come around on the overtime element after initial opposition, he said members likely felt the wage package was not sufficient as they voted against the offer.


"It was very decisive," Benaka said. "It is obvious we're far apart on the discretions forced on employees over the last ten years. Basically, they're not going to take it anymore."

Benaka said last month it would be the first time since the union was started in 1973 that a strike will take place.

Workers had been operating under a two-year agreement which ran out in September of 2020 and was extended through Sunday.

More: 'Ready to walk': Topeka's Frito-Lay workers take a vote that may prevent strike. Union president isn't optimistic.

In a statement, PepsiCo argued it had worked to meet the demands of workers and committed to fully continue operations at the plant in light of the strike.

"That the union membership rejected this fully recommended agreement suggests union leadership is out of touch with the sentiments of Frito-Lay employees," the statement said. "Because the union had fully recommended our tentative agreement, we do not anticipate any further negotiations with the union for the foreseeable future."

According to John Nave, executive vice president of Kansas AFL-CIO, the state's labor federation, a strike is the last thing workers want when negotiating union contracts. He expected donations from the community and other labor unions throughout the state as the strike date nears.

"It's kind of like the last line of defense," Nave said. "And that's a hard decision because it affects many, many people. Union members don't want to do that. ... But when the company fails to do a fair negotiation at the bargaining table — and history has shown (Frito-Lay has) repeatedly failed to do that — then there's no other alternative."

PepsiCo's seven divisions include Frito-Lay, one of the largest snack-selling companies in the U.S., whose Topeka plant is at 4236 S.W. Kirklawn Ave.

The Capital-Journal's Tim Hrenchir and India Yarborough contributed to this report.

Frito-Lay calls bakers’ union leadership “out of touch” following vote to strike

By Kimberly Donahue
Published: Jul. 4, 2021 

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Frito-Lay responded to Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 218 union to strike this weekend after more failed negotiations.

In a statement to 13 NEWS Frito-Lay said:

“Frito-Lay and BCTGM Union Local 218 met last week and reached a fully recommended two-year agreement that included across-the-board wage increases both years of the contract and improved work rules that would have reduced overtime and hours worked.

Though each member of the union negotiating committee, including the union president, individually committed to supporting the agreement and encouraging Frito-Lay employees to vote in favor of ratifying it and Frito-Lay urged all associates to vote in favor of the fully recommended agreement (after nine months of negotiations), the agreement was voted down Saturday, July 3. While the union has suggested that Frito-Lay didn’t meet its terms, Frito-Lay had agreed to the union’s proposed economic terms. In addition, it was Frito-Lay, not the union, that proposed overtime limitations.

That the union membership rejected this fully recommended agreement suggests union leadership is out of touch with the sentiments of Frito-Lay employees. Because the union had fully recommended our tentative agreement, we do not anticipate any further negotiations with the union for the foreseeable future.

Therefore, Frito-Lay employees will be on strike effective Monday, July 5. The strike unnecessarily puts our employees at risk of economic hardship and will inevitably divide the workforce. Frito-Lay will be focused on continuing to run the operations of our plant in Topeka and has a contingency plan in place to ensure employee safety. We will continue to be attentive to the situation and welcome any employees who wish to continue to work as they are legally entitled to do so.”

The strike begins at 12:01 AM Monday.

Copyright 2021 WIBW. All rights reserved.

Black TikTok Creators Are On Strike To Protest A Lack Of Credit For Their Work

July 1, 2021
SHARON PRUITT-YOUNG

Black creators on TikTok have joined a widespread strike over what some are criticizing as cultural appropriation on the popular video app.Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Black creators on TikTok are hanging up their dancing shoes until further notice.

Tired of not receiving credit for their creativity and original work — all while watching white influencers rewarded with millions of views performing dances they didn't create — many Black creators on TikTok joined a widespread strike last week, refusing to create any new dances until credit is given where it's due.

The hashtag "BlackTikTokStrike" has been viewed more than two million times on TikTok, with users sharing videos of less inspired dances that have popped up in the absence of Black creators. The hashtag has taken off on Twitter as well.

If you were to check out TikTok videos featuring Megan Thee Stallion's latest hit, "Thot S***," for example, what you'd find instead of another viral dance challenge are videos by Black creators calling out the lack of credit they receive and raising awareness of the strike.

Enlarge this image
The hashtag "BlackTikTokStrike" has been viewed more than two million times on TikTok.Photo Illustration by Amna Ijaz

One video, which has been viewed more than 440,000 times, shows Erick Louis, a Black TikTok creator, seemingly about to introduce a new dance before flipping the script with a caption that reads "Sike. This app would be nothing without [Black] people." (And even that, Louis said in another post, was copied by a pair of TikTok users whose video got 900,000 views.)

The situation called to mind the recent TikTok controversy surrounding the Nicki Minaj song "Black Barbies." With lyrics like, "I'm a f****** Black Barbie. Pretty face, perfect body," the song was used on the app to showcase videos of Black beauty. But white users soon began using the song as well, kicking off a debate about cultural appropriation on the app

While TikTok has only been around since 2016, it has already emerged as an example of how new forms of technology are being used as a tool for cultural appropriation, according to Sarah J. Jackson, an associate professor and co-director of the Media, Inequality & Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. While Jackson's work does not focus on TikTok, much of her research centers on the intersection of race, media and activism.

"A large swath of American popular culture comes from Black culture and that is before the internet even existed," Jackson said. "We can take any historical period and look at popular culture, at any particular historical period, and see the ways in which white folks who have access to mainstream capital and mainstream media and other forms of access were drawing inspiration from the art forms and creative forms of Black folks."
Dissatisfaction has been brewing for some time

Black creators on the app have long been calling out what they say is the preferential treatment that white creators receive. In March, late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon invited TikTok star Addison Rae Easterling to perform a seriesof eight viral TikTok dances on his show, none of which she created. The creators of those dances were not featured for the segment, nor were they given credit, aside from the show posting their usernames in the description box of the YouTube video after the episode aired. After considerable backlash, Fallon invited the actual creators of the dances onto his show the following month, and acknowledged that they "deserve their own spotlight."

But the Fallon episode wasn't the first example, nor will it likely be the last, of Black TikTok creators being overlooked in favor of their white counterparts.

During last year's NBA All-Star Weekend, the NBA invited several white TikTok creators, most notably Easterling and siblings Charli and Dixie D'Amelio. The trio scored prime seats, sat for interviews and were even asked to dance on the court. Easterling's TikTok videos show her performing numerous TikTok dances with NBA cheerleaders and teaching dances to NBA players — including the Renegade dance. The choreography is set to K Camp's "Lottery," and it's one of the most well-known dances on TikTok.

The dance's actual creator — Jalaiah Harmon, a Black teenager from greater Atlanta — was initially not invited until the NBA issued an invitation following pushback on social media. She later made a video that weekend performing the dance with Easterling and Charli D'Amelio, who were criticized alongside the NBA for not acknowledging Harmon earlier. Neither Easterling or the D'Amelios were reachable for comment.

In an interview with The New York Times, Harmon said that unfortunately, not being credited for a world-famous dance that she created, yet seeing it become ubiquitous, has been hard to watch.

"I was happy when I saw my dance all over," Harmon told the paper in 2020. "But I wanted credit for it."

Harmon has only recently begun to receive more widespread recognition for creating one of the first TikTok dances to really take off in popularity, scoring major endorsement deals and magazine covers. But for every Harmon, frustrated users are asking themselves how many Black creators are still struggling not only to get the recognition they deserve, but dealing with antagonism from those who don't understand why receiving that credit is so important in the first place.

When it comes to being credited for one's work, there's crucial historical context to consider, said Jackson.

"Since the founding of this country, Black art forms, Black dance forms, have been appropriated, watered down, repackaged and used to make money by white folks," she said. "And so, if you put it in that context of that longer history of basically stolen labor and stolen creativity, then you start to see why it matters to people and why it's important to people to be credited for the origins of these things."
TikTok says it wants credit for creators to be the norm

It's not the first time that TikTok has been called to the carpet over issues of race. Last summer, numerous Black TikTok users joined together to host a "blackout" to protest content related to Black Lives Matter, police brutality and the murder of George Floyd being seemingly hidden on the app. TikTok responded with an apology to the Black community, referring to what happened as a "technical glitch," promising to "repair that trust" with Black users, and pledging to make the app a more diverse, welcoming space. The company also held town hall and round-table discussions and formed a Creator Diversity Collective.

Still, some Black creators said that, around eight months later, problems with the app persisted, according to NBC News.

In a statement to NPR, a spokesperson for TikTok said Black creators are part of what makes the platform so successful, and that the company is working to build a culture on the app around crediting creators.

"TikTok is a special place because of the diverse and inspiring voices of our community, and our Black creators are a critical and vibrant part of this. We care deeply about the experience of Black creators on our platform and we continue to work every day to create a supportive environment for our community while also instilling a culture where honoring and crediting creators for their creative contributions is the norm," that statement said.

The company also pointed to a recent progress report on its diversity efforts and referenced the recent launch of the @BlackTikTok page, an official TikTok account run by Black employees.

In the meantime, Black creators are still using the app, but instead of creating dances that get stolen, they're calling out non-Black users and pointing out just how much everyone else is struggling without their input.

Just consider the case of "Thot S***." It's a summer anthem waiting to happen, but the dances that are being posted to the song don't have the same magic as previous viral creations, despite the fact that, as many online have pointed out, the song's chorus includes pretty simple instructions about putting "hands on [your] knees."

As the strike continues, some users have been posting videos lamenting how different their experience on the app is without Black dance creators.

"When are the Black creators finishing their strike?" a voice-over says in one video. "This app isn't fun anymore."

Viral dances: Black tickers go on strike


Livia Laurie



Black tickers creating viral dances went on strike. That’s the reason you can’t get a glimpse of the choreography in Megan Thee Stallion’s new song.

Everything indicated that the viral dance performed by thousands of users would accompany this song Thought shit, Released in mid-June as a trend in Tic Tac Toe. However, this is not the case for Megan Thee Stallion’s new song. And it’s no coincidence: black designers are on strike for not getting credit for the dances they create.

Florida-based dictator Eric Lewis was the first person to protest against the cultural acquisition of black creators and say he would not choreograph the song, according to the U.S. Daily. Vox.

“As blacks we are always aware of being excluded and rejected. Whether in the fields of music, fashion, language or dance – even in the places we can create for ourselves – blacks are constantly invading these spaces without respect for the architects who built them,” he explained in an interview. Vox.

Because, financially and notoriously – the people who benefit from these choreographies are not the ones who created them, but the most popular ticktockers like Charlie de Amelio or Addison Ray, whose subscribers number in the millions.

“It’s necessary because we are assembling in this way, and it’s something we’ve been discussing in ourselves for a while,” Eric Lewis said.

Addison Ray’s invitation to the Jimmy Fallon show last March was the grass that broke the camel’s back for many. Although she is not a creator, she has performed eight of the most popular dances on the social stage. The names of the original creators of these choreographies were not mentioned during the broadcast.

After the fact, some of them were invited to the show, giving some recognition to their choreography. The host opened the section by admitting that it was a mistake not to invite them in the first place, saying that the creators “deserved to come forward.”



Livia Laurie
“Web specialist. Pop culture buff. Thinker. Foodaholic. Travel maven. Avid coffee junkie. Amateur tv advocate.” See author's posts

PHYSICS

An Artificial Network Kept on The 'Edge of Chaos' Acts Much Like a Human Brain

Conceptual age of a neural network (left) next to an image of a nanowire network (right). (Adrian Diaz-Alvarez/NIMS Jap

DAVID NIELD

4 JULY 2021

Researchers have demonstrated how to keep a network of nanowires in a state that's right on what's known as the edge of chaos – an achievement that could be used to produce artificial intelligence (AI) that acts much like the human brain does.

The team used varying levels of electricity on a nanowire simulation, finding a balance when the electric signal was too low when the signal was too high. If the signal was too low, the network's outputs weren't complex enough to be useful; if the signal was too high, the outputs were a mess and also useless.

"We found that if you push the signal too slowly the network just does the same thing over and over without learning and developing. If we pushed it too hard and fast, the network becomes erratic and unpredictable," says physicist Joel Hochstetter from the University of Sydney and the study's lead author.

Keeping the simulations on the line between those two extremes produced the optimal results from the network, the scientists report. The findings suggest a variety of brain-like dynamics could eventually be produced using nanowire networks.

Conceptual image of randomly connected switches. (Alon Loeffler)

"Some theories in neuroscience suggest the human mind could operate at this edge of chaos, or what is called the critical state," says physicist Zdenka Kuncic from the University of Sydney in Australia. "Some neuroscientists think it is in this state where we achieve maximal brain performance."

For the simulations, nanowires 10 micrometers long and no thicker than 500 nanometers were arranged randomly on a two-dimensional plane. Human hairs can be up to around 100,000 nanometers wide, for comparison.

In this case, the problem the network was tasked with was transforming a simple waveform into a more complex type, with the amplitude and frequency of the electrical signal adjusted to find the optimal state for solving the problem – right on the edge of chaos.

Nanowire networks combine two systems into one, managing both memory (the equivalent of computer RAM) and operations (the equivalent of a computer CPU). They can remember a history of previous signals, changing their future output in response to what's happened before, making them memristors.

"Where the wires overlap, they form an electrochemical junction, like the synapses between neurons," says Hochstetter.

Typically, algorithms train the network on where the best pathways are, but in this instance, the network did it on its own.

"We found that electrical signals put through this network automatically find the best route for transmitting information," says Hochstetter. "And this architecture allows the network to 'remember' previous pathways through the system."

That in turn could mean significantly reduced energy usage, because the networks end up training themselves using the most efficient processes. As artificial intelligence networks scale up, being able to keep them lean and as low-powered as possible will be important.

For now, the scientists have shown that nanowire networks can do their best problem solving right on the line between order and chaos, much like our brain is thought to be able to, and that puts us a step closer to AI that thinks as we do.

"What's so exciting about this result is that it suggests that these types of nanowire networks can be tuned into regimes with diverse, brain-like collective dynamics, which can be leveraged to optimise information processing," says Kuncic.

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

 Scientifically mysterious cloud bigger than milky way found in no-man’s land

The orphan cloud.

BYAMIT MALEWAR

JULY 3, 2021

 

SPACE

The orphan cloud is the blue umbrella-shaped part of this image, which is color-coded to show the X-ray part of the cloud in blue, the warm gas in red and the visible region in white. Images courtesy of European Space Agency / XMM-Newton

A research team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has discovered a lonely cloud bigger than the Milky Way in a “no man’s land” for galaxies. This scientifically mysterious cloud in Abell 1367 is full of hot gas with 10,000-10,000,000 degrees Kelvin (K).

Abell 1367 is also known as Leo Cluster, which contains around 70 galaxies and is located around 300 million light-years from Earth. 

The team discovered the cloud in a cluster of galaxies where thousands of galaxies are bound together with tenuous hot gas. Despite being discovered in a cluster of galaxies, this lonely cloud is not associated with any galaxy. Hence, scientists say it is in a no-man’s land.

The discovery was made using the European Space Agency (ESA) X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton), Europe’s flagship X-ray telescope. The cloud was also observed with the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope/Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (VLT/MUSE) and Japan’s flagship optical telescope, Subaru.

Dr. Ming Sun, an associate professor of physics at UAH, said, “This is an exciting and also a surprising discovery. It demonstrates that new surprises are always out there in astronomy, as the oldest of the natural sciences. ESA agrees as our discovery was selected as an ESA image release, which has been very selective.”

According to scientists, the origin of the cloud must be a large, unknown galaxy in the cluster. They think that the gas in the cloud must be removed by the ram pressure of the hot gas in the cluster when the host galaxy is soaring in the hot gas with a velocity of 1,000-2,000 kilometers per second.

Dr. Sun said, “That’s about 50 times faster than the orbital speed of Earth around the sun. That level of force at work can rip the interstellar medium out of a galaxy. In this case, we found that the temperature of the cloud is consistent with having originated from a galaxy.”

“Once removed from the host galaxy, the cloud is initially cold and is evaporating in the hot intracluster medium, like ice melting in the summer.”

“It is estimated that this massive, mysterious cloud has survived for hundreds of millions of years after removal from its host galaxy.”

“This surprising longevity is poorly understood but may have something to do with the magnetic field in the cloud.”

Journal Reference:

1. Chong Ge et al., An H α/X-ray orphan cloud as a signpost of intracluster medium clumping, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab1569

COMRADES ON THE RED PLANET
China’s crewed mission to Mars with plans to build permanently inhabited base

MEGHANA KANDRAJULY 3, 2021

China plans to send a crew to Mars by 2033 and further plans to build a permanently inhabited base. They plan to extract resources from the red planet. On race with America, China has ambitious plans to reach Mars.


Image credits- CNET

China’s main rocket maker told in a space exploration conference that they planned for crew missions in 2033, 2035, 2037, 2040, and goes on. Prior to sending crew, robots will be sent to Mars to study the area, so they can plan for setting up a base area. This base will be used to extract resources and work on certain experiments.

For the crew to be able to use the resources, ways to produce oxygen, finding water underneath the surface, and generating electricity are some ways. China plans to work on developing such advanced technology. While the Americans already have technology like boosters to reused the rocket and come back. China is yet to have the rockets which can send a crew to space and bring them back.

By the end of 2030, the extracted samples and other materials will be acquired by China’s uncrewed mission to mars. NASA has already been working on sending crew by 2030. However, China seems to now make potential plans with their plans to send fleets to mars and return some fleet to earth. The major challenge lies with the ability to tap energy from heat and electricity. Also, time plays an important role. They plan to make these missions happen in a few hundred days of flight time.

China’s space missions

Last week, China sent astronauts to their unfinished space station. It has been there since 2016 and was left out till this recent involvement. Once it finished, it will be living quarters for China’s space crew. The current crew on the station will stay there for three months. Expected to be complete by 2022 end.

The main reason for China to have a different space station is because they were banned from NASA. Currently, the International Space Station is being backed by Russia, Canada, Japan, and Europe. Chief designer of China’s manned space program said, “At this current stage, we haven’t considered the participation of international astronauts, but their future participation will be guaranteed,”

Furthermore, China plans to set up a base on the Moon. Deploying robotic expeditions to asteroids and Jupiter form the South pole of the moon. China already sent a remote-controlled motorized rover to Mars. Thus China became the only nation so far to land vehicles on the red planet. In some ways, Chinese space technology advanced beyond expectations.