New Year’s Eve Sees Nationwide Gun Violence, Ending Record-High Year of Mass Killings
Lawmakers Pledge ERA Will Pass in Virginia ; The End of Neoliberalism ; and More Picks
Lawmakers Pledge ERA Will Pass in Virginia. Then What? (Reader Steve)
The author writes, “The proposed 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution faces a host of likely legal challenges and vehement opposition from conservative activists who depict the ERA as a threat to their stances on abortion and transgender rights. The passage of time is also a factor. When the measure passed Congress in 1972, lawmakers attached a 1977 ratification deadline to it, then extended it to 1982. While the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is likely to extend the deadline again, the Republican-controlled Senate may balk, increasing the chances of litigation.”
More Carbon Emissions Come From Lost Electricity Than the Chemical Industry (Mili)
From Ars Technica: “Inefficient global power transmission and distribution infrastructure requires additional electricity generation to compensate for losses. And countries that have large shares of fossil fuel generation and inefficient grid infrastructure, or a combination of the two, are the predominant culprits of what we call ‘compensatory emissions.’ These emissions are the result of the extra electricity — often generated from fossil fuels — required to compensate for grid losses. We calculated that worldwide, compensatory emissions amount to nearly a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year, in the same range as the annual emissions from heavy trucks.”
Global Apathy Toward the Fires in Australia Is a Scary Portent for the Future (Chris)
The author writes, “The city of Melbourne … has been choked by smoke … and the glaciers all the way in New Zealand have changed color because of the fires, too. … Due to the bushfires, 480 million animals have died. And because plants contain carbon which is released when burned, when the New South Wales fires finally do burn out, they almost certainly will have doubled Australia’s national carbon emissions for the year — or more.”
Neoliberalism Is Dead (Chris)
From the New Republic: “The long-dominant ideology brought us forever wars, the Great Recession, and extreme inequality. Good riddance.”
The Most Unusual Ways Many African Countries Got Their Names (Russ)
The author writes, “Nearly every country on earth is named after after one of four things — a directional description of the country, a feature of the land, a tribe name or an important person, most likely a man. For the most part, Africa mirrors this trend with a few exceptions. The stories of how African countries got their names ranges from the more mundane, to the fantastical and sometimes even the mind-boggling.”
