Tegan Tuesday: Cursed without cursive?

Every couple of weeks I’ll see yet another article bemoaning the state of education because darn kids and their darn texting aren’t learning cursive! Occasionally the article will appeal to parents and educators from a pedagogical point of view: this argument is about how people remember things differently when typed or when handwritten, and, obviously, cursive is the fastest writing so it should be used. Sometimes the argument is an appeal to preservation and history: kids can’t read non-typed documents oh no! The rare article sticks to complaining about Kids These Days and how they need to learn cursive just because. Because I had to. Because they hate it. Because they’re on their phones too much. Just, because. Depending on how frothing at the mouth the author of the article is, I either laugh or roll my eyes at every single one. Because each argument is nonsense.

Those who argue that memory is aided by the process of writing by hand have flawed methodology in their research. The question is not ‘which is better, typing or handwriting data?’ but rather, ‘does a person learn better when using the data preservation method they were trained on?’ Up until extremely recently, the predominant method of data recording was by hand. Even the coding that took the men to the moon was done by hand, because processing power was expensive and because the human computers had trained that way. As a millenial, I learned to take notes and write essays by hand. This means that my first training was in manual recording and it is my default. Any time I type I am surrounded by paper with hand-scrawled notes and notebooks for additional commenting. I often do essay planning or rough drafts longhand and my processing speed is different for handwriting and typing. I am a touch typist, so when I have a script to follow, I have a fairly swift typing speed. When pulling from thoughts, there are stops and starts and stuttering of my keyboard as I think slower than I type. Whereas by hand? I rarely pause because my thoughts move at a speed related to my hand speed. This combines with my visual learning style to mean that writing and seeing a handwritten note is much stickier, mentally, than a typed comment. Most of my typing rarely sticks in my thoughts at all — it’s more dictation, even when it comes from my own brain.

Contrast this with Gen Z who have been typing since they were small and have had computers in the classroom their whole lives. Many of them barely have functional handwriting at all, because typing has been their default for decades. But they are the first generation to have this pedagogical change, and thus the first to possibly truly answer the research question mentioned above about how people best learn. Any research prior to the past few years has, naturally, been conducted on people who learned handwriting first. Surprise! They remember details best when handwritten. But how does this hold up when confronted with students who learned typing first? I suspect that Gen Z thinks through their fingers on a keyboard the same way that I think with a pen in my hand. Anecdotally, I dated someone with dysgraphia for a number of years, and their brain could not actually form the pathways to build the muscle memory to write. They were gifted a typewriter for Christmas when they were 7 and never looked back. This person, naturally, thought best through a keyboard where writing by hand was an exercise in frustration.

The other argument worth addressing about cursive — or its lack — is its value to history. If children aren’t taught cursive, they won’t be able to read texts from the past! Well, I’m sorry to say that that has always been the case. Scripts have always been regionally- and temporally-based, and it is difficult to read ones outside of your own time and area. Heck, I sometimes can’t read the handwriting of the person next to me and I have to ask what a word is! Learning cursive allows for more fonts to be pre-loaded into mental storage but Spencerian is different from Secretary Hand  which is different from Palmer Method or Chancery or Sütterlin. A postdoc application that I read once included the detail that because the scholar was already familiar with the 19th century composer’s handwriting, they could actually read their diaries in all of its historical German shorthand glory. Because that’s the other thing about historical writings: the format and actual text differs from situation to situation. The go-to examples of this are diaries which often have abbreviated phrasing and spellings that are individual decisions, or handwritten recipes which have standard abbreviations that might vary from culture to culture and by time period. Where my grandmother would write “van,” or my mother would write “1 t van,” I would be more likely to write “1 tsp vanilla” — and we would all mean the same thing. But let’s take a look at an example from my research.

This is the inside page of a dictionary published in 1749. In the second inscription, (“The Gift of Anna Maria Botterell, to Bridgett Hawkins, on June the 24th 1778”) there’s an 18th century handwriting convention of spelling ‘the’ as ‘ye’ with the ‘e’ a superscript above the ‘y’. This is an artefact from when the English language included the letter ‘thorn’ and it stuck around as a shorthand in words like ‘the’ for centuries. But also look at the way Anna Maria Botterell writes ‘Hawkins’ compared to Bridgett (‘B’) Hawkins, the next Hawkins who’s first name or initial I cannot parse, or Maria Bratt Hawkins. I only know that Maria Bratt’s married name is Hawkins because of its proximity to all of the other names — and that’s nothing on how differently she wrote her location (‘Edgbaston’) from the previous person! The first writer, Sarah Botterell, has a clear difference in script between her handwriting and Anna Maria’s, although both are fairly clear to read. These five people were literate, valued book-learning (this is inside of a dictionary that remained in use for a century after publication), and even in an inscription had varying levels of legibility. How much less legible would their diaries or a note to the grocer be!

When considering the historical handwriting question, I am reminded of a dilemma from other historical pursuits. Often people living in historical homes are interested in returning the house to its previous life and spend hours searching for paint chips or evidence of wallpaper. But there is no evidence whatsoever that the previous owners of the house had taste! Just because the wall used to be lime green does not mean that you need to paint it lime green in order to “restore” the building to some form of former glory. And just as our ancestors may not have had good taste, they might have had bad handwriting. A child learning cursive only gains an extra mental font — it does not guarantee ease of handwriting decipherment.

The skill I wish schools actually taught? Proper typing. When I learned cursive, there was a great deal of emphasis on proper hand shape and how to best hold a pen. Students are typing more than ever, and there are equally more cases of repetitive stress injuries than ever before and at younger and younger ages. Please teach your kids how to hold their hands properly! We only get one set of them and trashing them with repeated use in awkward and terrible positions from a young age does no one any good. But cursive? Eh, I could take or leave it. The kids who are interested in it will find their own way (I know a lot of people who are interested in calligraphy and paleography) and rather than chivvy along a group of recalcitrant children that time could be better spent on more productive things like preventing injurious typing behavior.

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Coal workers can be transitioned to renewable energy jobs throughout the U.S.

When people talk about ending fossil fuel use, there are a wide variety of objections. The one that I think is perhaps the most valid, is concern for those workers whose livelihoods currently rely on the extraction, processing, transportation, and use of oil, coal, and natural gas. I don’t remember when I first heard this objection, but as with so many other “arguments“, no matter how many times it’s addressed, it keeps coming up. If we remove the fossil fuel industry, the obvious answer is to make sure that fossil fuel workers either get new jobs that fit their skills, or be given a dignified retirement if they’re old enough that retraining seems like a waste of their remaining time. Honestly, I’d be fine just making sure they all have their needs met regardless of whether jobs are found for them, since I think that should be the default for everyone.

But I get the concern. Capitalism – and U.S. history in particular – is rife with examples of industries that either died, or moved overseas. Detroit is probably the most famous example of this. Its auto industry was gutted, the money all left, and the city’s working class – having made the auto industry fabulously wealthy – was left to twist in the wind. Under the system we have, if your industry dies, there’s a good chance that you and your family with die too, or at least any hope for a life free from the horrors of poverty. The solution that I prefer doesn’t really matter on a practical level, because I have virtually no power to affect policy. Most people who are worried about their jobs aren’t really looking for “have a revolution” as the solution. Fossil fuel workers may or may not be on board with a new, left-wing re-imagining of society, but until it’s actually happening, it’s not a valid alternative to their very real jobs.

The more short-term solution, from a left-wing, ground-up perspective, might be to pool resources to ensure that people’s needs are met, but that’s gonna feel like charity to a lot of people, and at this stage there’s simply not the organization to demonstrate that we can actually promise to keep people housed and fed. Regardless of our ultimate goals, we need to be able to offer solutions within the system we have, and we need to be able to show that those solutions are actually within reach.

A research team at the University of Michigan has shown that we can absolutely replace every coal job in the United States with a renewable energy job:

As of 2019, coal-fired electricity generation directly employed nearly 80,000 workers at more than 250 plants in 43 U.S. states. The new U-M study quantifies—for the first time—the technical feasibility and costs of replacing those coal jobs with local wind and solar employment across the country.

The study, published online Aug. 10 in the peer-reviewed journal iScience, concludes that local wind and solar jobs can fill the electricity generation and employment gap, even if it’s required that all the new jobs are located within 50 miles of each retiring coal plant.

Keeping employment local would increase the costs of replacing U.S. coal-plant workers by $83 billion, or 24%, nationwide, according to the study.

“These costs are significant in isolation but are small relative to annual U.S. power investments of $70 billion and to the total costs of transitioning the U.S. energy system away from fossil fuels, which have been estimated to be as high as $900 billion by 2030,” said study senior author Michael Craig of U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability.

“Our results indicate that replacing lost jobs in coal-plant communities would modestly increase overall energy-transition costs while significantly furthering a just transition for one category of frontline communities,” said Craig, assistant professor of energy systems and an expert on power system emissions, operations and planning.

Obviously, the cost doesn’t bother me at all. I have my doubts as to whether it actually bothers anyone – most of the objections are probably from people who have an ideological problem with government action, or with ending fossil fuel use. Still, for those who still just see big numbers and general claims, the authors do go into a bit more detail:

The U-M researchers say federal policymakers could introduce a new investment tax credit to help defray the costs of achieving local replacement of coal with renewables. Such a credit would only apply to wind and solar projects that are located near retiring coal plants and that employ retrained coal-plant workers.

Previous studies have concluded that aggressively mitigating climate change will require deep, sustained reductions in emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas.

Since electric power is the cheapest sector to decarbonize, much of the early U.S. emissions reductions have come from that sector, largely due to a shift from coal to natural gas in the electricity-generation mix.

Many decarbonization pathways retire most or all U.S. coal-fired power plants within the next 10 to 20 years. Electricity generation from those retired plants will need to be replaced by new, low-carbon sources of energy. Despite the rapid growth of wind and solar power in the United States, previous research has not quantified the feasibility and costs of replacing coal jobs with local wind and solar jobs across the country.

The new U-M study helps fill those research gaps. It applies a bottom-up optimization model to all coal plants in the contiguous United States and assumes a full phase-out of the U.S. coal-fired fleet by 2030.

As each coal plant retires, the model requires new renewable investments to replace the retiring plant’s electricity generation and employment. The model replaces coal-plant power generation and employment with wind and solar located within specified distances from retiring power plants.

The researchers analyzed three “siting limits,” the maximum distance that replacement solar and wind facilities can be located relative to a retiring coal plant: 50 miles, 500 miles and 1,000 miles. The 50-mile limit approximates local solar and wind facilities and jobs that would not require relocation of coal plant workers, while the 1,000-mile limit includes jobs that would require relocation.

The researchers found that across most U.S. regions and siting limits, annual renewable energy employment fully replaces coal employment. In all regions and for all siting limits, retiring coal plants are replaced with a mix of wind and solar power.

Operations and maintenance jobs account for 57% to 92% of the replacement employment at wind and solar facilities while construction jobs play a lesser role, according to the study. O&M jobs include field technicians and administrative and management staff.

I think it’s fair to say that this sort of research will not persuade coal barons like Joe Manchin, but I think it could well persuade some of his current supporters that he doesn’t have their interests at heart, when he refuses to support better alternatives and a brighter future for the people of his state. I hate to mention that asshole, but it keeps coming back to the same thing, doesn’t it? We have the “solutions”, we just lack the political power to enact them (which is why organizing and building collective power is key). Without that, knowing that we can do this doesn’t do much beyond raising our blood pressure when we keep not doing it. Even though I don’t think our system is capable of a real response to climate change that addresses environmental injustice, it’s important to recognize that even progress that’s not far enough can still be a big step in the right direction.

And for every step, we can celebrate, and point to the clear evidence that more steps are both needed, and entirely possible.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Soup, Sabotage, and Spectacle Activism

I’ve been around liberal activism for most of my life. Specifically, I’m very familiar with what you might call “Liberal Protest Activism”(LPA for short). This is the kind of protest where you gather to demonstrate the numbers and determination of your movement, and to call for the government to make a change in response to popular pressure. In a lot of ways, it’s the main form of activism that’s viewed as “acceptable” within our society. In some sectors it’s the only form of activism that’s considered at all effective, which is something I used to believe.

You know the story – Ghandi’s movement was able to win freedom for India and Pakistan, M.L.K.’s movement was able to end Segregation and bring about racial equality. Anything that hints at violence, or that damages property or interferes with business is out of line and counterproductive.

In reality, both of those movements had militant elements, and took place within broader geopolitical contexts that had as much influence as any peaceful protest – probably more.

But within the framework of LPA, spectacle is extremely important, and there are a lot of different opinions about how to do it “right”. Some people think that the more “respectable” the conduct of the protesters, the better the optics, and the more likely that others will join in. Others think that doing silly, loud, or dramatic things will draw more media attention, and stir more conversation about the issue. There are also some who believe that a sincere demonstration of their sincerity, love, or faith will move other people on a spiritual level, and protests can become a sort of ritual.

In a lot of ways, this is the same as the arguments atheists have had about how we should defend or promote our unbelief. Should we mock religious beliefs and practices that seem silly to us? Should we be respectful and patient, and avoid ruffling any feathers? What tone is the most likely to get people to overcome their prejudices and listen?

My view on both of these arguments is the same. Different approaches will work on different people, at different points in their lives. There is room for a wide variety of approaches, and that’s what we should expect for such a strange and diverse species as humanity. More than that, I defy anyone to make a compelling case that it’s even possible to get everyone to agree on messaging and tactics. That’s not what humans are. Some will definitely go for uniforms, planned messages, and so on, but trying to get everyone to do the same thing feels a bit like saying that if everyone just agreed with me, then the world would be doing fine.

That may or may not be the case, but it’s largely irrelevant, because that’s not how people work.

This is not me saying there’s no point in trying to convince people of things. I hope this doesn’t need saying, but if I believed that, this blog would not exist. I just don’t think that I can persuade everyone. I don’t even think that I can persuade anyone by myself, I’m just trying to be part of the process that moves some people in the right direction.

In that same spirit, while I don’t think that LPA is sufficient to change the world in the ways we need to change it, I do think it’s a valid part of a larger movement. For myself, I’m fairly uncomfortable with theatrics, and I have a hard time persuading myself that dressing up and dancing around or something like that is worth the effort. My preference has been to find conversations about theatrical protests, and try to direct them towards the issue the protest is about. They did their job by making people talk, and now it’s my turn to make something useful of that conversation. If people are going to be doing silly and dramatic things, then the media is going to focus on that. It just makes sense to try to make use of that attention while it’s there, and it’s not like I can stop people from doing that stuff anyway.

Which brings us to the recent decision of a couple activists to throw tomato soup on a glass-protected Van Gogh painting and glue themselves to a wall.

Was this useful? Not particularly, but within the framework of LPA, it fits. No real damage was done, and it certainly generated a lot of buzz. The thing is – while I believe some people are genuinely upset at the disrespect shown to a great work of art, I don’t actually believe that anyone’s seriously changing their mind about climate change because of it. If someone’s opinion on whether or not climate action is necessary is swayed by two kids throwing soup at a painting, then I don’t know that it’s worth trying to discipline a global movement specifically for that person’s benefit. I also don’t see a lot of point in saying “they don’t represent all of us”, because I don’t think anyone believes they really do. Some may pretend to believe it because they already opposed the movement, but those folks will also believe that people are going to give their kids free drugs. Trying to appease them doesn’t seem worth the effort to me.

So my initial reaction was to point out that more conventional protest has not resulted in adequate climate action thus far.

I still think that’s the case.

We’ve certainly made progress. Renewable energy is booming around the world, and that is slowing the rate at which annual emissions are increasing. At the same time, emissions are still increasing, and people are dying because of climate change now.

If you think the action that’s been taken to date is adequate, then I have to question to what degree you value human life.

That said, my initial response was wrong, at least in one way. I think it was a holdover from my fairly recent days of believing in the efficacy of this kind of protest, combined with a lack of new reflexes for a different approach. See, from what I can tell, a majority of the world – even in Western countries – believes there’s a need for more action on climate change. If I have a role in redirecting the attention from activism like this, it probably should be to try to get people talking more about organizing and direct action. What we’re lacking isn’t a desire for change, but the tools for change. If conventional protest doesn’t work, what does work? Doing stranger more offensive forms of protest amounts to trying to do more of the thing that’s not working, in the hopes that “more” is what’s needed.

What I probably should have done in response to this was work on updating my direct action post, since it’s overdue for a tune-up, and trying to have a conversation about more effective forms of activism.

There’s been some discussion around whether or not Just Stop Oil is actually trying to undermine the climate action movement, but while I think that’s worth investigating, it shouldn’t be the basis for how we react to any given action by them. The reality is that there are people trying to sabotage that movement, and there will be for any movement that’s trying to get large-scale change. There will be corporate infiltrators. There will be government infiltrators. We should be on guard against that, but I don’t think that means trying to find and expose every single one. That seems like a futile effort, and a great way to create division and enmity within any movement.

The focus, rather, should be on what goals we want, what tactics we want to use, and making sure everyone understands why a group wants to do things a certain way for a certain action. What material effect will a given action have? If there’s a media buzz around something like this soup-throwing protest, is that something we should try to use, or should we just ignore it and focus on what we were already doing?

As I’m fond of saying, I don’t have all the answers, I’m just trying to figure out some of them. I don’t think this protest was helpful, but neither do I think there’s much point in getting worked up about it. Personally, I shouldn’t have given in to my reflex to defend this one in the way that I did. I think the best conversation for me to try having next time something like this happens, is about what kinds of activism would actually work.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: Münecat DISMEMBERS body language experts!

Body language analysis is one of those fields that makes me worry for the future of humanity. I don’t have a problem with some level of “seems like that person’s acting oddly” when we’re comparing someone’s behavior to their own personal baseline, but at best that should be a starting point for investigation, not evidence from which to draw a conclusion. Unfortunately, there seems to be a whole industry of self-described Body Language Experts who make a living opining on the inner thoughts and feelings of people they’ve never met, and also helping the police prosecute people based on their bullshit pseudoscience. As always, Münecat gives us an entertaining and blunt (adult language) dissection of the issue, coupled with her unique musical stylings.

No, parents, nobody is going to give your kids free drugs on Halloween.

Well, COVID seems reluctant to just… go. Today has been much like yesterday – eyes feel puffy, some congestion, and a need to sleep more than usual. My default seems to be staring vacantly into space without any real ability to focus, which makes the ability to touch-type very useful, as long as I don’t get my hands out of alignment and start yoprgm tsmfpo9y, mpmdrmdr.

That means that today’s a video. I’d thought about Shaun’s latest, but PZ beat me to that. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. It’s pretty simple – a breakdown of who J.K. Rowling’s transphobic allies are. As with other analysis of that bigot’s behavior, beliefs, and buddies, this really makes one feel that she enjoys making other people suffer, so long as she’s still still rolling in dough.

So, for today I’ll direct your attention to a different bullshit moral panic – the traditional Halloween-time activity of convincing frightened parents that people want to give free drugs to their children. The TL:DW is this: whether it’s cannabis, meth, or fentanyl, nobody is going to give your children free drugs. That’s not a thing that happens. The people who make drugs want to sell them, because that’s how they make money.

I think what’s really depressing about this is how well it demonstrates that for a certain section of the population, they will believe anything if they’re told that that thing is a threat to them from “bad people”.

To those who need to hear it I will say this: Enjoy Halloween. Let your kids go trick-or-treating. Start trying to think of your fellow humans as being, well, your fellow humans. The ones you need to be afraid of are the ones constantly telling you to be afraid of the people around you.

 

Coverage of cops needs to change.

I am not a journalist. I write about news, but I’m pretty much always a secondary or tertiary source. All of that is to say that I’m not an expert in this field, so maybe I’m missing something obvious when I ask:  Why would so-called “news” organizations ever report police statements as fact?

The recent ubiquity of cameras has revealed something that was always there – police do not make our communities safer. They do not serve us. They serve themselves, and they serve the ruling class. In fact, through civil asset forfeiture, they play an increasingly large role in preventing class mobility – stealing from those who have little enough to begin with, apparently just because they can. If the United States was actually a free and just society, governed by and for the people, civil asset forfeiture would never have been made legal in the first place. If we had the kind of democratic power our leaders pretend we do, then I have to believe these laws would have been changed after John Oliver shined a big spotlight on them in 2014. Apparently the only state that’s actually made a meaningful change is apparently New Mexico.

Between 2000 and 2020, police stole at least $68 BILLION dollars from innocent people in the United States. Again, under the law, you do not have to be convicted of anything for the police to just take your property, and you have to hire an attorney on your own dime if you want to get it back. Might be hard to do if they’ve just stolen all your money, or your car, or your home.

More than that, cops lie constantly, and at this point it’s been so widely reported that I cannot believe anyone in the news industry is unaware. By the time we saw the cavalcade of lies from the Uvalde PD, nobody who had been paying even a little attention was surprised by their craven dishonesty.

When the subject of police violence comes up, I sometimes hear people say that even though cops do kill around three people per day. that’s not that many out of the hundreds of thousands of interactions every day. Even ignoring the less direct harm done by police theft and police dishonesty, the focus on killings often leads to us overlooking the non-lethal violence that police inflict on the communities that pay them:

>Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that since 2015, more than 400,000 people have been treated in emergency rooms because of a violent interaction with police or security guards. But there’s almost no nationwide data on the nature or circumstances of their injuries. Many of the country’s roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies don’t tally or make public the number of people who need medical care after officers break their arms, bruise their faces, or shock them with Tasers.
Researchers point out that only a tiny portion of arrests involve force. But when police do use force, more than half of the incidents ended with a suspect or civilian getting hurt, according to a 2020 analysis. It’s unclear how serious the harm is. “We need better data on injury severity,” said Matthew Hickman, a professor at Seattle University and one of the study’s authors.
Most experts agree that injuries at the hands of cops remain underreported.

And, of course, that doesn’t even start talking about the prevalence of white supremacy in law enforcement.

I don’t think any of this is new to my readers at this point, or if it is maybe you’re new around here? Maybe I need to write about this more often. Obviously, I don’t think that the corporations who own most “news” coverage in the United States serve the public interest any more than the cops do. If you want more of a breakdown of the problems of crime reporting in the US, you can go here. The point of this post was to say that I think the tendency towards passive reporting, and police-friendly reporting continues to help cops get away with a level of abuse and criminality so extreme that I’ve had people deny its reality to my face “because they would have heard about it”.

They should have heard about it, but for all our media love sensationalism, they love protecting the rich and powerful far, far more. If they actually saw themselves as serving the interests of the public, this is what their reporting would look like (content warning for extreme grief):

How warm air stirs Greenland’s waters and accelerates even submarine melting!

I seem to be on some sort of COVID plateau. My temperature hasn’t gone above 37.5,  and my throat and lungs have been mostly fine, but my ability to regulate my temperature is still wonky, and my snot production is still far too high. My eyeballs also aren’t thrilled about all of this.

That said, I’m starting to feel bad about just posting videos, so instead you get a somewhat gloomy climate science report! How excited you must be! I should say, however, that thus far the ocean is not hot enough to melt submarine vessels, in case the headline had you confused. We’ve got at least another couple years before the oceans get hotter than burning jet fuel.

Well, since you’re so excited, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. According to new research, the Greenland ice sheet may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought:

Rising air temperatures amplify the effects of melting caused by ocean warming, leading to greater ice loss from the world’s second largest ice sheet, a study reveals.

While previous studies have shown that rising air and ocean temperatures both cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt, the new study reveals how one intensifies the effects of the other.

Experts liken the effect to how ice cubes melt more quickly if they are in a drink that is being stirred – the combination of warmer liquid and movement accelerates their demise.

In Greenland, amplification occurs when warm air temperatures melt the surface of the ice sheet, generating meltwater.

Meltwater flowing into the ocean creates turbulence that results in more heat melting the edges of the ice sheet submerged in the ocean – so-called submarine melting.

The team found that air temperature has had almost as much impact as ocean temperature on submarine melting, with some regional variations.

For example, ocean temperature is the main factor that controls submarine melting in south and central-west Greenland, while atmospheric warming is equally damaging in the island’s northwest.

The findings suggest that if the atmosphere had not warmed since 1979, the retreat of Greenland’s glaciers, driven by submarine melting, could have been reduced by a half in the northwest region, and by a third across Greenland as a whole.

At this point I think it’s important to note that this is new understanding, not a new phenomenon. That means that even if this “stirring” effect is not accounted for in estimates and predictions for ice melt and sea level rise, it is accounted for in the actual data we have about sea level. This process has been ongoing for as long as ice melt has been increasing. Knowing about it will allow for more accurate estimates and predictions, which can only be a good thing. The bad news, of course, is that ice melt and sea level rise are likely to progress faster than currently predicted.

The effect we investigated is a bit like ice cubes melting in a drink – ice cubes will obviously melt faster in a warm drink than in a cold drink, hence the edges of the Greenland ice sheet melt faster if the ocean is warmer. But ice cubes in a drink will also melt faster if you stir the drink, and rising air temperatures in Greenland effectively result in a stirring of the ocean close to the ice sheet, causing faster melting of the ice sheet by the ocean. This unfortunately adds to the overwhelming body of evidence showing the sensitivity of the Greenland ice sheet to climate change, hence the need for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
-Dr Donald Slater, School of GeoSciences

Whenever we get bad news like this about the climate, it’s important to remember that for us, this changes very little. Those in power continue to demonstrate their inability to deal with climate change in a responsible manner, which means that we need to build the collective power to change who’s in power, or ideally end this antiquated insistence on having a ruling class. That means questioning “common sense” about the hierarchies and rules set over us, and it means encouraging people to think about direct action. It means organizing, and it means preparing for bad times so we can help our communities if the need arises. As ever, humanity’s greatest strength is our ability to cooperate, and we’ll need that going forward.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Tegan Tuesday: Backstage Beauty

The joy of doing gig work in the performing arts means that sometimes you are in non-public facing areas of interesting places. Now, I am someone who likes both history and architecture, so it’s not always hard to find something I’d consider interesting, but the specific quality of hidden or forgotten parts of a place that only exist once you’re past the ‘Employee Only’ door are always unexpected and sometimes truly bizarre. I know when I worked in the box office of a theatre in Boston I’d find abandoned safes, decades-old and abandoned merch, and we had a collection of several hundred CDs collected over the years. If I looked hard enough, I’d also find tape cassettes and inside jokes from dead actors scrawled on the walls.

This week I am in and out of Ireland’s National Concert Hall in Dublin. I had actually attended concerts here prior to my ever going ‘backstage.’ But this building has only loosely abandoned its earlier uses. Let’s take a brief photo journey through some NCH history.

The first image is a modern picture of the National Concert Hall from the street.

An image of a stone building, taken at a slight angle. It has columns and wings extending beyond a central point, and there are three visible floors.

This next image is one that’s posted in the upstairs hallway of an earlier life of the building. The accompanying caption reads: The Royal University Dublin pre-1908. During major University College Dublin reconstruction work, the campanile was dismantled and removed to the Royal College of Science in Dublin’s Merrion Street around 1915.

A photo of the previous building, clearly an older version. There is a front section with a cornice and pillars that is missing from the modern image.

That’s right! The NCH used to be one of the buildings for University College Dublin (one of the Irish state schools, along with others like UC Cork and UC Limerick) back when all of the Dublin universities were downtown. It makes sense that a state-owned building would remain a state building when UCD moved to their Belfield-area campus in the 1970s. According to wikipedia, the building was originally an exhibition hall until it was repurposed into a university in the late 19th century, so going from university to concert hall is hardly its first rebranding.

Just being an old school building or exhibition hall isn’t particularly fancy, as any number of buildings are abandoned schools, or churches, or supermarkets. It’s probably more common for a building to have had multiple uses throughout its life than to remain one single entity forever. The Boston theatre mentioned previously had been a church in its past, for example. But like so many areas of downtown Dublin, there were important connections to the Irish civil war too.

A black and white photo of a large room with molding on the walls and in archways. The room is full of benches and chairs, mostly visible from the back.

The caption accompanying this picture states: Council Chamber of UCD, now the Kevin Barry Room, where the Treaty debates took place between 14th December 1921 and 10th January 1922. On the reverse of this photograph, it was noted at the time ‘would not be allowed take photo during sitting.’ There are actually quite a few photos on the walls of civil war and independence relevant images and details, and so even wandering the halls can be an interesting experience. But notice the benches in that photo of the Council Chamber?

A photo of a hallway painted pink and white. Distinctive benches made of oblong planks are visible running the length of the hallway.

Those benches are still here! This is one end of the first floor hallway, each of these rooms are currently small rehearsal spaces and lesson rooms. They could of course be repro, but they are such an unusual shape I feel like it would be easier to just re-use old benches rather than source a modern recreation. It does look like some of the hardware has been changed, but the overall appearance is the same.

I have, however, saved the best secret for last. Any building can have a past. Any building can reuse furnishings from said past. But let’s take a peek out the windows of that hallway with all of the benches.

A photo of an outdoor area with low brick buildings and a driveway.

See it yet?

A zoomed-in photo of the previous driveway are, however the doorway in the back is visible and labled 'Pathology.'

A pathology lab! This UCD building had been where medicine and engineering studied and these traces are absolutely everywhere that concert patrons are not. Many of the rehearsal rooms and offices are labeled as the offices of former professors or different departments or specific classes. As many of these doors are starting to lose some of their letters, and I was technically working, I only snapped one quick photo of a particularly nice example of this.

A photo of a set of double doors. The focus is on the label 'Physiology' written on the glass above the doors.

Isn’t that just so charming? I love how the professors and students stepped out of this building one day and the building has waited for their return. As the main concert hall only opened in 1981, a friend of mine said his father had attended UCD when it was here, and that the concert hall was the exam room. It had apparently made for a nervewracking first concert experience, trying to overcome the training of four years worth of fear and stress that lurked behind the doors to that room.

What history is hidden in the buildings you frequent? Even the simplest thing gains shine when viewed from decades away, and it is often a fun game to try and find the evidence of the past.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: What the new “Climate Declaration” doesn’t tell us

Well, I’m still sick. It feels different from yesterday – my sinuses feel too hot and dry rather than full of gunk – but I’m still out of it enough to want another day “off”.

Thankfully, a blast from the past is here to save me!

Longtime skeptic/atheist types are probably familiar with Peter Hadfield, known on Youtube as Potholer54 for his work debunking creationists, and overseeing the Golden Crocoduck award, for lying in defense of creationism. He’s also done some good work debunking climate deniers, and exposing their bullshit. I hadn’t thought of him in a little while, but recently I saw a new letter/petition “signed by hundreds of scientists” saying that there’s no climate emergency, and it made me think of him.

Sure enough, he was good enough to pop up and demonstrate how this letter is as much empty propaganda as its predecessors. This is an old tactic, and as you’ll see if you watch, a predictable one.

It’s not warming, but if it is, it’s not humans doing it, but if it is, there’s nothing to worry about, and – get ready for this one – there might be something to worry about, but there’s nothing we can do, so we shouldn’t try.

I also like the fact that we can see that our climate action – woefully inadequate as it has been – has had some effect.

Video: How Corruption Leads to Conspiracy Theories

Well, today may have been better than yesterday, but if so it was not by much. I’m glad it wasn’t worse, and I have my fingers crossed for tomorrow. It’s still basically just congestion, and just a hint of an impending sore throat that has yet to arrive. Oh, and some difficulty with temperature regulation. I think my head feels a little clearer today, but the fact that I’m so uncertain seems to imply otherwise.

Anyway, here’s a video that I think is useful. The ruling class of the US has spent the last century or so making corruption so much a part of daily operations that a lot of people can’t even tell it’s there. Growing up, I remember hearing about corruption in other countries – through media of various sorts – and it was always presented as a pyramid of officials shaking people down, and shaking each other down, all the way to the top, all outside the actual laws. I’ve grown up a bit since then, but even so it’s hard to really pick apart just how much the United States has been designed over the years to have a scared and obedient workforce that willingly gives almost all of everything they create or earn to corporations.

In that setting, is it any wonder that people believe in conspiracies? Add in the various conspiracies that we know have happened, and I think it would be more surprising if people didn’t start seeing patterns where none actually exist. This video is an interesting dig into some research into why people believe conspiracy theories, and how government corruption can lead to them. As always with Rebecca Watson’s videos, you can find a full transcript on Skepchick.org.