- Remote work has made America more suburban
- Remote work is increasing the size of American homes and yards
- The ability to work from anywhere means vacations involve at least one person working during the trip
- More people are using real-time digital collaboration tools (Zoom and Microsoft Teams)
- Better work life balance » Time wasted commuting to and from work is now time spent caring for their families and themselves
Category: Human Rights (Page 11 of 12)
The latest criticism came from Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak, who called a cartoon strip of Wong’s “distorting” and “unethical.” His three-panel strip, published Tuesday, showed a man saying Hong Kong’s community representatives will be chosen “as long as the leader finds them suitable” even if they do not pass their exams and health checks.
The strip followed last week’s government announcement of reforms to the district council election that drastically reduce the number of elected seats to just one-fifth of all seats, with the rest to be either appointed by the government or selected by committees staffed by pro-establishment figures.
Wall Street Journal » TikTok says it deleted the dashboard in the US in 2022
Business has been good, despite the niche business model and record inflation sending food and beverage prices soaring. The Sports Bra brought in $944,000 in revenue in the eight months it was open in 2022.
“The typical Everybody Eats meal is a basic two-eggs breakfast: two eggs cooked however the customer likes it. You get a side of our delicious home fries and toast,” Collin Doran said.
China’s foreign ministry protested the possible expulsion of a Chinese diplomat in Canada who Ottawa has accused of participating in a harassment campaign against a Canadian lawmaker.
Ambassador Cong Peiwu was summoned by Canada’s foreign ministry on Thursday over allegations that a Chinese-led harassment campaign had targeted Conservative lawmaker Michael Chong after he voted in favour of a February 2021 parliamentary motion condemning Beijing’s treatment of the Uygur Muslim minority in Xinjiang as “genocide”.
It followed a Globe and Mail report on Monday – citing classified documents and an anonymous security source – that claimed Toronto-based Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei was involved in a Ministry of State Security effort to get information on Chong and his family in Hong Kong.
We are at something of an impasse. The list of things that can get you killed in public is expanding every single day. Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life. We can’t even agree on right and wrong anymore. Instead of addressing actual problems, like homelessness and displacement, lack of physical and mental health care, food scarcity, poverty, lax gun laws and more, we bury our heads in the sand. Only when this unchecked violence comes to our doorstep do we maybe care enough to try to effect change.
There is no patience for simple mistakes or room for addressing how bigotry colors even the most innocuous interactions. There is no regard for due process. People who deem themselves judge, jury and executioner walk among us, and we have no real way of knowing when they will turn on us.
I will be thinking about Jordan Neely in particular for a long time. I will be thinking about who gets to stand his ground, who doesn’t, and how, all too often, it’s people in the latter group who are buried beneath that ground by those who refuse to cede dominion over it. Every single day there are news stories that are individually devastating and collectively an unequivocal condemnation of what we are becoming: a people without empathy, without any respect for the sanctity of life unless it’s our own.
Charge of the Mexican Cavalry at the Battle of Puebla (Mike Manning via Wikimedia)
The Battle of Puebla (Spanish: Batalla de Puebla; French: Bataille de Puebla) took place on 5 May, Cinco de Mayo, 1862, near Puebla de los Ángeles, during the Second French intervention in Mexico. French troops under the command of Charles de Lorencez repeatedly failed to storm the forts of Loreto and Guadalupe situated on top of the hills overlooking the city of Puebla, and eventually retreated to Orizaba in order to await reinforcements. Lorencez was dismissed from his command, and French troops under Élie Frédéric Forey would eventually take the city, but the Mexican victory at Puebla against a better equipped[5] force provided patriotic inspiration to the Mexicans.
The anniversary of the victory is primarily celebrated in the Mexican state of Puebla, where the holiday is celebrated as El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).[10][11][12] There is some limited recognition of the holiday in other parts of the country. In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a holiday celebration of Mexican heritage.
Elsewhere » Jessica Bloustein Marshall, Mental Floss / The Daily Scrum
» NPR / Washington Post / NY Times / NBC News /
Residents in better-off areas are also breathing easier: PM2.5 emissions fell a median of nearly 0.7 kilograms per year in those census tracts, four times the median reduction in disadvantaged communities. Researchers found that PM2.5 pollution actually rose in 17% of disadvantaged areas, which are home to 39% of California’s fossil fuel power plants. Those communities also experienced smaller reductions in other air pollutants in contrast to wealthier areas, according to the analysis of 8,057 census tracts in California.
“These communities receive far fewer rebates and therefore see substantially less air quality improvement as a result of decreased tailpipe emissions,” said Jaye Mejía-Duwan, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in UC Berkeley’s environmental science, policy and management program. Mejía-Duwan said low-income neighborhoods often bear the brunt of increased power plant pollution that results from charging EVs located in distant wealthier areas.
Nikkei » NATO is opening an office in Tokyo to better consult with partners in the Indo-Pacific region.
Also » The Guardian / Reuters / Taiwan News
The appeal comes in his message ahead of World Press Freedom Day, celebrated annually on 3 May, in line with a 1993 UN General Assembly resolution.
The focus this year is on the connection between press freedom and overall human rights.
Reporters Without Borders described China as “the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content.” The People’s Republic of China fell to 179th place on the index, just one place above bottom-of-the-class North Korea.
When done correctly, these are some of the benefits of working less hours per week »
- A smaller ecological footprint
- A stronger economy » improves social and economic equality
- Better employees » less prone to sickness and absenteeism, a more stable and committed workforce
- Lower unemployment » helps to redistribute paid and unpaid time more evenly
- Improved wellbeing » greatly reduces stress levels and improves overall wellbeing, mental, and physical health
- More equality between men and women » helps change attitudes about gender roles
- Higher quality, affordable childcare » helps parents better balance their time, reducing the costs of full-time childcare
- More time for families, friends and neighbours » allows more time to value, appreciated, and strengthen all the relationships that make our lives worthwhile and help to build a stronger society
- Making more of later life » eases the transition from employment to retirement
- A stronger democracy » more time to participate in local activities, to learn and care about what is happening around us
This is a summary of an article by Anna Coote, published by the New Economics Foundation in 2014 »
Both the Seattle Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library have made their complete e-book and audiobook catalogs available to teens and young adults anywhere in the US.
Teens and young adults ages 13 to 26 living anywhere in the U.S. can access our entire collection of e-books and audiobooks.
Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) is launching a new campaign today, titled Books UnBanned, to help teens combat the negative impact of increased censorship and book bans in libraries across the country. For a limited time, young adults ages 13 to 21 nationwide, will be able to apply for a free eCard from BPL, unlocking access to the library’s extensive collection of eBooks.
Two and a half years of meager rain have shriveled crops, killed livestock and brought the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions, to famine’s brink. Millions of people have faced food and water shortages. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, seeking relief. A below-normal forecast for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue.
…
The findings starkly illustrate the misery that the burning of fossil fuels, mostly by wealthy countries, inflicts on societies that emit almost nothing by comparison.
Mr Bryant, a self-described data nerd, started the Gun Violence Archive in 2013, having spotted a “big gap” in the availability and accuracy of up-to-date statistics. He sought to do something about it.
“When we got this thing started we thought this was going to just be five years, but we just kept growing and kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Mr Bryant says.
So did American gun violence.
Between 2016 and 2021, the number of deaths from gun violence increased by 6,000, or almost 40%; the number of teens killed or injured by guns was up 47%; the number of children killed or injured by guns, was up 60%.
Tracking these gruesome statistics has taken a toll on Mr Bryant, who says he sleeps about six hours a night, going to bed at 05:00 and waking up at 11:00.
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post »
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen.”
That is the testimony of E. Jean Carroll, searing and raw nearly three decades after the alleged attack in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.
It is important — no, it is imperative — not to sanitize Carroll’s testimony this week in a Manhattan federal courtroom. We have become so inured, so numb, to stories about Trump’s behavior that it is tempting to minimize the case.
Also » CNN / Axios / Mother Jones / NPR / The Guardian / UPI / The Guardian / France 24 / BBC / Salon / Politico / NY Times
His book on American political life, published in two volumes between 1835 and 1840, was not to be read as a travelogue, he warned his readers. But besides being an aristocrat, liberal theorist and politician, he was also a perennial traveller – something that involved no little risk, both because of the greater inconvenience and danger of travel during his lifetime, and his own fragile health, which frequently cut short his trips and finally cut short his life in 1859 at just 53.
Tocqueville’s peregrinations form the subject of Jeremy Jennings’ new book, Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America – which, despite its title, devotes considerable attention to the famous trip to America, while delving also into less well-known voyages to Germany, Switzerland and Ireland, among other countries. The book’s objective is to “take Tocqueville seriously as a traveller”, which involves dissenting from the view of Tocqueville’s critics, who argue – according to Jennings – that the Frenchman “learned nothing from his travels and was more interested in mixing with the social elites of the country he was visiting”.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the anti-Putin resistance group Pussy Riot, was named a top enemy of Russia for speaking out against Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship throughout the last decade. In this inspiring talk, she tells the story of her imprisonment and exile, shares what motivates her resistance and delivers a powerful message to Putin himself.
1,902 years ago, on April 26, 121 AD, Marcus Aurelius was born.
The wise Emperor of Rome (161-180) was known as much for his philosophical writing as for his reign.
Marcus Aurelius didn’t believe a society should be divided by class or engage in slavery. He believed all men were equal and that the government’s purpose was to serve the people. He wrote, “Men exist for the sake of one another.”
“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying…or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “To do what needs doing.” Look inward. Don’t let the true nature of anything elude you. Before long, all existing things will be transformed, to rise like smoke (assuming all things become one), or be dispersed in fragments…to move from one unselfish act to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness…when jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations