All posts tagged: humanity

PFAS, a family of 10,000 ‘forever chemicals’ contaminating all of humanity

PFAS, a family of 10,000 ‘forever chemicals’ contaminating all of humanity

Published by Sam

Unknown to the general public just a few years ago, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances) are now considered to be the cause of the most serious pollution crisis ever known. These “forever chemicals” contaminate not only the entire planet but also the blood of all human beings. Le Monde and its 29 partners have revealed the staggering cost of pollution clean-up for our economies, and the extent of the lobbying campaign waged by industrialists to prevent PFAS from being banned. Here are the essential questions raised by these man-made chemicals. Read more Subscribers only PFAS: The astronomical cost of depolluting Europe What are PFAS? Per- and polyfluoroalkylated substances (PFAS) are a family of over 10,000 synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer products since the late 1940s. They are non-stick, water-repellent, stain-proof and resistant to very high temperatures and extreme physical conditions. These valuable properties have made them the ingredients of choice in thousands of applications. Myriad consumer products contain PFAS or are manufactured using these substances, sometimes both, like the best-known of them all: …

A Triple Threat to Humanity: Climate Change, Pandemics, and Anti-Science

A Triple Threat to Humanity: Climate Change, Pandemics, and Anti-Science

Published by skeptic

Over the past decade, many of us in the scientific community have come to appreciate the existential threat we face today—a threat unlike any we’ve witnessed since the days of the U.S. and Soviet Cold War in the last half of the twentieth century. While even today the specter of nuclear annihilation remains, especially given the escalation of hot wars in Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Iran, we now face entirely new twenty-first-century forces that place the future of humankind in even greater peril. Our newest and gravest challenge may not feel as acute as the 1980s Cold War threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD). There are no missiles with nuclear warheads crisscrossing the oceans. But it is every bit as real, posing a threat to civilization and our planet. This NextGen MAD consists of three synergistic components.   The first component is the unprecedented warming of our planet and temperatures that one of us (Michael Mann) highlighted more than two decades ago while still a postdoctoral researcher in the form of the now-famous “hockey stick” curve. The warming …

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Questions What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Questions What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

Published by José

We now live in the midst of an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence boom, but it’s hard­ly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been sub­ject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties. Even­tu­al­ly, those busts — which occurred when real­iz­able AI tech­nol­o­gy failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thor­ough­go­ing that each was declared an “AI win­ter” of scant research fund­ing and pub­lic inter­est. Yet even deep into one such fal­low sea­son, AI could still inspire enough fas­ci­na­tion to become the sub­ject of the 1978 NOVA doc­u­men­tary “Mind Machines.” The pro­gram includes inter­views with fig­ures now rec­og­nized as lumi­nar­ies in the his­to­ry of AI: John McCarthy, Mar­vin Min­sky, Ter­ry Wino­grad, ELIZA cre­ator Joseph Weizen­baum. It also brings on no less a tech­no­log­i­cal prophet than Arthur C. Clarke, who notes that the dubi­ous atti­tudes toward the prospect of think­ing machines expressed in the late sev­en­ties had much in com­mon with those about the prospect of space trav­el dur­ing his youth in the thir­ties. In his …

Why “humanity’s last exam” will ultimately fail humanity

Why “humanity’s last exam” will ultimately fail humanity

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. There are all sorts of situations we face in life where we need to consult someone with expert, specialized knowledge in an area where our own expertise is insufficient. If there’s a water leak in your house, you may need to consult a plumber. If there’s pain and immobility in your shoulder, you may need to consult an orthopedist. And if there’s oil leaking from your car, you may need to consult an auto mechanic. Sure, you can attempt to solve these problems on your own — consulting articles on the internet, reading books, leveraging trial-and-error, etc. — but no matter what expert-level knowledge you yourself possess, there will always be a place where your expertise ends. If you want to know more, you’ll have no choice but to either seek out a source who knows what you don’t or figure it out for …

A Richer Sense of Humanity | Fintan O’Toole

A Richer Sense of Humanity | Fintan O’Toole

Published by skeptic

Ferdia Lennon’s novel Glorious Exploits brings to life an episode from the Peloponnesian War, when seven thousand Athenian soldiers were captured and crowded into a quarry outside Syracuse after a failed attack on the city. As Fintan O’Toole suggests in his review in our November 7, 2024, issue, the book “makes us feel like its story is happening now.” This is thanks in part to its tone, the way Lennon layers “his own Irishness over the classical narrative,” and in part because the fate of the prisoners “prefigures so many of European history’s lagers and gulags and prisoner-of-war camps.” The subject of power and its abuses is also eerily close to another recent essay by O’Toole, from our November 21 issue, on Donald Trump’s ugly rhetoric in casting Kamala Harris as a monstrous, because female, threat to the United States. Fintan O’Toole is the Advising Editor of The New York Review, and has been contributing essays on history, fiction, and politics, as well as trenchant portraits of political leaders, to our pages for more than twenty-five years. His most recent …

The Hindenburg Disaster: Oh, the Humanity!

The Hindenburg Disaster: Oh, the Humanity!

Published by skeptic

  Although the airplane had been invented in 1903 and saw rapid adoption by the world’s militaries during World War I, air travel was far from luxurious during the 1930s. However, a class of luxurious lighter-than-air craft known as zeppelins captured the world’s attention: they were quiet, relatively stable, and gave passengers a far more stately way to travel. As the world struggled out of the Great Depression, would fleets of zeppelins become the new wave of air travel? Tragically, a single disaster on May 6, 1937 doomed this method of transportation. Filled with flammable hydrogen, the luxurious Hindenburg airship caught fire and was quickly ablaze as it attempted to dock over Manchester Township, New Jersey.   Setting the Stage: Infancy of Commercial Air Travel A photograph of an early passenger airplane circa 1920. Source: Royal Aeronautical Society   World War I showed that airplanes were highly versatile, and they were quickly put into use to carry both passengers and cargo after the war. Post-WWI airplanes delivered the mail and were popular in barnstorming shows, …

10 things you didn’t know about the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement | We Are Here For Humanity

10 things you didn’t know about the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement | We Are Here For Humanity

Published by Sam

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement started with the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863, in response to the terrible human toll of the revolutionary conflicts raging in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. Seven years later the British Red Cross was established. Today, the Movement is active in 191 countries and has been a constant and reassuring presence at some of the world’s most harrowing events: from being among the first to provide humanitarian support after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, to providing vital assistance to those affected by last year’s devastating earthquakes in Morocco, Turkey and Syria. You may know some of these facts, but did you know … 1 The Red Cross’s ‘red cross’ is not a logoEven though it is one of the most recognisable pieces of graphic design in the world, the red cross emblem is not just some clever bit of branding: it is a symbol of protection in armed conflict, the use of which …

‘I feel more connected with humanity’: the club where phones are banned – and visitors pay for the privilege | Life and style

‘I feel more connected with humanity’: the club where phones are banned – and visitors pay for the privilege | Life and style

Published by skeptic

When I walk into Amsterdam’s Cafe Brecht, I immediately want to take a picture. The old-fashioned bar – with its plush sofas, vintage art and warm lighting – is what the Dutch would call “gezellig”, a word with many meanings but perhaps best summed up as “cosy” or “pleasant”. My instinct is to whip out my phone and take a photo. For friends? Future reference? Who knows? But I’ll have to rely on my memory, as I’ve checked it at the door. I’m at the cafe for a Sunday morning “digital detox hangout”, organised by the burgeoning Offline Club. I’ve dropped my phone off in slot seven of a fancy-looking lockbox, committing to spend the next few hours unplugged. There’s a set schedule: we have some time to chat at the beginning, then 45 minutes to ourselves, another 30 minutes to connect, followed by another 30 minutes of quiet time. During the quiet time, we are invited to do any sort of activity – I brought a book – provided we don’t interrupt others. The …

France charges ex-wife of top IS group official with crimes against humanity

France charges ex-wife of top IS group official with crimes against humanity

Published by Sam

France has charged the ex-wife of a top Islamic State official with crimes against humanity on suspicion of enslaving a teenage Yazidi girl in Syria, French media reported. Issued on: 28/04/2024 – 09:30 1 min A woman identified as Sonia M., the former wife of the jihadist group’s head of external operations Abdelnasser Benyoucef, was charged on March 14, Le Parisien said Saturday. The Yazidi woman, who was 16 when she was forced into slavery by Benyoucef, accused Sonia M. of raping her twice and knowing that her husband was raping her, the report said. The woman, now 25, said she was held for more than a month in 2015 in Syria, where she was not allowed to eat, drink or shower without Sonia M.’s permission. Sonia M. denied the allegations against her in a March 14 interview with French investigators, saying “only one rape” had been committed by her former husband. The teenager “left her room freely, ate what she wanted, went to the toilet when she needed to”, she said in her interview, …