All posts tagged: pushing

Trump’s White House return is already pushing Europe and the UK closer together

Trump’s White House return is already pushing Europe and the UK closer together

Published by Sam

 British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves talks to the media at the EU Council headquarter on Dec. 9, 2024 in Brussels, Belgium.  Thierry Monasse | Getty Images News | Getty Images BRUSSELS, Belgium ꟷ President-elect Donald Trump has not yet re-entered the White House, but the U.K. and neighboring European Union are already working closer together to protect themselves against potential trade and defense confrontations with the incoming U.S. leader. U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves travelled to Brussels on Monday to convene with her EU counterparts in the first such encounter since Britain left the European Union in 2020. Her host, Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe, said he hoped this would be the first of “many” meetings. “There was a broadly shared sense that, in a world of turmoil, we continue to have shared interests and values,” one EU official, who did not want to be named due to the delicate nature of the conversations, told CNBC about the meeting with the U.K.’s chancellor. The same official added that these shared values concern Ukraine, China and …

The Gateway Pundit Is Still Pushing an Alternate Reality

The Gateway Pundit Is Still Pushing an Alternate Reality

Published by José

The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website with a history of spreading lies about election fraud, recently posted something out of the ordinary. It took a break from its coverage of the 2024 presidential election (sample headlines: “KAMALA IS KOLLAPSING,” “KAMALA FUNDS NAZIS”) to post a three-sentence note from the site’s founder and editor, Jim Hoft, offering some factual information about the previous presidential election. In his brief statement, presented without any particular fanfare, Hoft writes that election officials in Georgia concluded that no widespread voter fraud took place at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena on Election Day 2020. He notes specifically that they concluded that two election workers processing votes that night, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, had not engaged “in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct.” And he explains that “a legal matter with this news organization and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement.” Indeed, the blog post appeared just days after the Gateway Pundit settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Freeman …

‘Nobody ever saw anything like this before’: how methane emissions are pushing the Amazon towards environmental catastrophe | Greenhouse gas emissions

‘Nobody ever saw anything like this before’: how methane emissions are pushing the Amazon towards environmental catastrophe | Greenhouse gas emissions

Published by skeptic

Controlling methane provides our best, and perhaps only, lever for shaving peak global temperatures over the next few decades. This is because it’s cleansed from the air naturally only a decade or so after release. Therefore if we could eliminate all methane emissions from human activities, methane’s concentration would quickly return to pre-industrial levels. Essentially, humans have released in excess of 3bn tonnes of methane into the atmosphere in the past 20 years. Quashing those emissions within a decade or two would save us 0.5C of warming. No other greenhouse gas gives us this much power to slow the climate crisis. If the Earth keeps warming, though, reducing emissions from human activities may not be enough. We may also need to counter higher methane emissions in nature, including from warming tropical wetlands and thawing Arctic permafrost. The highest natural methane emissions come from wetlands and seasonally flooded forests in the tropics – such as the Brazilian Amazon forest I recently visited at the Mamirauá sustainable development reserve – and they are expected to rise with …

Doug Emhoff is pushing more men to advocate for abortion rights

Doug Emhoff is pushing more men to advocate for abortion rights

Published by skeptic

ATLANTA — Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is pushing for more men to become involved in advocating for abortion rights, telling NBC News in an exclusive interview that he sees a role for men in the ongoing battle over access. Emhoff, who partnered with a group called Men4Choice to convene a panel in Atlanta, said men must see the fight over abortion access as both a women’s issue and a family issue that affects the fundamental freedoms of all Americans. Ahead of the November election, he plans to mobilize men across the country around the issue and to stress the importance of men being allies to women regarding reproductive health care.  “This is an issue of fairness to women. Women are dying,” Emhoff said. “It’s affecting man’s ability to plan their lives. And it’s also an issue of what’s next, what other freedoms are at risk. And these freedoms are affecting all Americans, not just women.” Emhoff, who became the first second gentleman in U.S. history after the election of his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, said …

Pushing Buttons: With creative developers shutting everywhere, the future of games looks bleaker and more boring | Games

Pushing Buttons: With creative developers shutting everywhere, the future of games looks bleaker and more boring | Games

Published by skeptic

Last month the games company Take-Two Interactive announced it would reduce its global staff by 5%, laying off 580 people to reduce costs. It was one of many such announcements in 2024, but this case is especially egregious because Take-Two ownsRockstar Games, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, AKA the most successful game in the history of the world, and is definitely not short of profits. Last week, Bloomberg (£) reported on internal documentation showing the likely victims of these cuts: studios Intercept Games in Seattle and Roll7 in London are set to close. Both are part of Private Division, the giant publisher’s indie game label. I spent some time with Intercept’s Kerbal Space Program 2 last year, when they were gearing up to launch. This exceptionally nerdy game about getting tiny green astronauts into space, which hews so closely to the real life physics of space flight that it inspired a generation of engineering students, has had a troubled time. It had been through a studio closure and a change of developer already, and its …

Burnout Is Pushing Workers to Use AI—Even if Their Boss Doesn’t Know

Burnout Is Pushing Workers to Use AI—Even if Their Boss Doesn’t Know

Published by skeptic

White-collar workers are so overwhelmed with emails, web chats, and meetings that they are using AI tools to get their jobs done—even if their companies haven’t trained them to do so, according to a work trends index published Wednesday by Microsoft and LinkedIn. Seventy-five percent of people in desk jobs are already using AI at work, and the amount of people using AI has nearly doubled over the past six months, the report found. The vast majority of workers using AI—regardless of whether they are baby boomers or Gen Z—are “bringing their own AI tools” rather than waiting for their companies to guide them. “People are overwhelmed with digital debt and under duress at work,” Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft’s chatbot Copilot and cofounder of Workload, said in a video announcing the report’s results. “And they are turning to AI for relief.” Microsoft (which also owns LinkedIn) stands to win from the adoption of AI, and is already cashing in on its generative AI tools. The new report is built on a survey of …

Judge Cannon grants Trump’s latest request for a delay, possibly pushing trial to after the election

Judge Cannon grants Trump’s latest request for a delay, possibly pushing trial to after the election

Published by skeptic

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case has reversed her own decision and elected to postpone the deadline for a crucial court filing in the criminal proceeding. This decision, revealed Monday, increases the risk that the trial will be pushed back past the November election. Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s postponement of the filing deadline — a list of the classified documents that the defense team would like to present at trial — is another feather in Trump’s cap, marking his latest successful attempt at delaying the classified documents trial. If he wins, Trump can then order his Justice department to drop the matter entirely, The New York Times reported.  Trump’s lawyers were supposed to file their list by this Thursday, a deadline Cannon had set last month. The judge did not announce a new deadline, nor has she announced a trial start date. The trial had been slated to start May 20, but that date was scrapped at a March 1 hearing. When the list of defense documents is filed, it will be an integral …

US Pushing G-7 To Accept Long-Term Billion Aid Package For Ukraine

US Pushing G-7 To Accept Long-Term $50 Billion Aid Package For Ukraine

Published by skeptic

As part of the latest in the Western allies’ (some of them at least) controversial push to confiscate Russian sovereign assets and give them to Ukraine, the Biden administration is leading talks among G7 nations to commit to a new military aid package for Kiev worth up to $50 billion. “Ideally, this is something we would like the entire G7 to participate in, be part of, not just have the United States doing it alone,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Bloomberg. She further confirmed that Group of Seven countries are currently “discussing” the plan. Image via Yahoo News The package would be funded from interest accrued via investments utilizing the some $300 billion in Russian assets currently frozen in Western banks. The bulk of the frozen funds are in European banks, and some EU leaders fear devastating backlash and global distrust in its banking system would be the end result. These frozen assets within the European Union (some $280 billion) are currently said to generate about 5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) in windfall profits annually.  According to …

I was a running addict – but pushing myself to the limit led to two knee replacements | Rod Gilchrist

I was a running addict – but pushing myself to the limit led to two knee replacements | Rod Gilchrist

Published by skeptic

I am preparing for an anaesthetist to sink a hypodermic needle into my back at a busy London hospital ahead of a scheduled surgery to replace my knee. Knowing this might be painful, I ask a fellow patient how he got his mind around the jab. “Two spliffs of good dope worked for me,” he confessed. I’m yet to try that, but this is my second left knee replacement in less than 15 years – an increasingly common story as our population ages and obesity levels cause growing strain on our joints. More than 2m hip and knee replacements have been performed in the UK since the early 2000s and waiting lists continue to grow. By 2060, demand for hip and knee joint replacement (based on data for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man) is estimated to increase by almost 40%. But I think there is another reason for these soaring figures: I blame the fitness gurus. Joe Wicks and his ilk, with their fashionable shorts and bulging quads, all promise we …

Pushing the boundaries: England Women using AI to help with team selection | England women’s cricket team

Pushing the boundaries: England Women using AI to help with team selection | England women’s cricket team

Published by skeptic

The England Women’s head coach, Jon Lewis, has revealed how he is using AI as a selection tool and credits the technology with helping his side draw last summer’s Ashes series. Lewis was first exposed to the work of London-based PSi when he took charge of the Women’s Premier League franchise UP Warriorz in India and now uses the company to bolster the decisions he makes about squad make-up, team balance and in-game match-ups. Explaining the system, which plots projected outcomes depending on the composition of each side, he said: “I can send multiple different line-ups to the PSi in London and they run, I think, about 250,000 simulations per team that I send, with all different permutations that could happen through the game. “We are able to run simulated teams versus the simulated opposition to give us an idea about how those teams may match up against each other. I came across it during my time at UP Warriorz and it’s something I looked at and thought it could add some value to the …