Emissions Drop During COVID-19 Lockdown Will Do ‘Nothing’ for Climate Change: Study
Puerto Rico Halts Primary Voting for Centers That Never Received Ballots ; Canadian Ice Shelf Area Bigger Than Manhattan Collapses ; and More Picks
Puerto Rico Halts Primary Voting for Centers That Never Received Ballots (DonkeyHotey)
The author writes, “Puerto Rico on Sunday was forced to partially suspend voting for primaries marred by a lack of ballots as officials called on the president of the U.S. territory’s elections commission to resign. The primaries for voting centers that had not received ballots by early afternoon are expected to be rescheduled, while voting would continue elsewhere, the commission said.”
US Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones (Reader Pat)
From the Wall Street Journal: “A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide … Anomaly Six LLC, a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone’s location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone’s GPS coordinates.”
Canadian Ice Shelf Area Bigger Than Manhattan Collapses Due to Rising Temperatures (Dana)
The author writes, “The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July. The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island, in the sparsely populated northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. ‘Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up,’ the Canadian Ice Service said in a tweet earlier this week. … The shelf’s area shrank by about 80 sq km. By comparison, the island of Manhattan in New York covers roughly 60 sq km. ‘This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it’s disintegrated, basically,’ Copland said.”
This Giant Climate Hot Spot Is Robbing the West of Its Water (Russ)
From the Washington Post: “This cluster of counties on Colorado’s Western Slope — along with three counties just across the border in eastern Utah — has warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius, double the global average. Spanning more than 30,000 square miles, it is the largest 2C hot spot in the Lower 48, a Washington Post analysis found. The average flow of the Colorado River has declined nearly 20 percent over the past century, half of which is because of warming temperatures, scientists say. With the region’s snowpack shrinking and melting earlier, the ground absorbs more heat — and more of the precious water evaporates.”
Tuscany’s Medieval ‘Wine Windows’ Have Reopened to Serve Wine, Aperol Spritz, Gelato, and Coffee in a Tradition That Dates Back to the Plague (Dana)
The author writes, “In Florence, creative restaurant and bar owners have now taken inspiration from a medieval architectural quirk to keep their businesses and the spirit of the city alive. According to Florence’s Wine Window Association, a handful of wine windows have opened across the city — some for the first time in living memory. Wine Windows, or buchette del vino, are little hatches which were originally used to sell surplus wine direct to Florence’s working class.”
