Griffin took matters into her own hands and returned to Twitter using the account of late mother, Maggie Griffin. Maggie, who starred alongside Kathy on “My Life on the D-List” for six seasons, died in March 2020. Maggie also appeared opposite her daughter in projects such as “Kathy” and “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story.”

“I’m tweeting from my dead mother’s account,” Kathy announced from the Maggie Griffin Twitter page. “She would not mind.”

When one Twitter user called out Griffin for assuming the role of her late mother on Twitter after she got banned for impersonating Musk, Griffin pushed back, “Oh, for gods sake…look at the date on the tweet you are referencing. It is from 2019. My wonderful mother had an account that I ran for her. She passed away, but I always kept the account. Trust me, she would be with me on this. Relax.”

Musk made a wisecrack that Griffin got suspended from Twitter for “impersonating a comedian,” to which she replied, “I mean…you stole that joke, you asshole. People have been posting that joke for hours, you hack. Look, please do a better job running this company. It used to mean something.”

Later on, Musk wrote on Twitter that “if she really wants her account back, she can have it” by paying $8, referring to the new subscription model for Twitter Blue.

Following Griffin’s ban, the hashtag #FreeKathy began trending on Twitter. Celebrities such as Mark Hamill shared the hashtag, which the Maggie Griffin account re-tweeted.

    I mean… you stole that joke, you asshole. People have been posting that joke for hours, you hack.
    Look, please do a better job running this company. It used to mean something.
    This is KG btw
    — Maggie Griffin (@TipItMaggieG) November 7, 2022

Oh, for gods sake Andy, look at the date on the tweet you are referencing. It is from 2019. My wonderful mother had an account that I ran for her. She passed away, but I always kept the account. Trust me, she would be with me on this. Relax. #FreeKathy
    — Maggie Griffin (@TipItMaggieG) November 7, 2022

Apologize in advance for all the comments you’re gonna have to read about how ugly I am and they’re probably gonna throw you in there too. Oh by the way this is KG. I’m tweeting from my dead mother’s account. She would not mind. #FreeKathy
    — Maggie Griffin (@TipItMaggieG) November 7, 2022

    I’m back from the grave to say…#FreeKathy #TipIt
    — Maggie Griffin (@TipItMaggieG) November 7, 2022

    #FreeKathy
    — Maggie Griffin (@TipItMaggieG) November 7, 2022

Source

Federal prosecutors have recovered $3.36 billion in bitcoin that was stolen a decade ago from Silk Road, the dark web bazaar responsible for distributing massive quantities of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to people worldwide.

Last November, federal agents executing a search warrant on a then-defendant’s Gainesville, Georgia, house seized a little more than 50,491 bitcoin that was stashed in an underground floor safe and on a “single-board computer” that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet, the Justice Department said on Monday. During the same search, agents recovered $661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins (physical bitcoin) with an approximate value of 174 bitcoin, 11.1160005300044 additional bitcoin, and four one-ounce silver-colored bars, three one-ounce gold-colored bars, four 10-ounce silver-colored bars, and one gold-colored coin.

A $3.3 billion mystery

At the time, the haul was the biggest cryptocurrency seizure in US Justice Department history and today remains the department’s second largest financial seizure ever, behind a $3.6 billion seizure prosecutors made earlier this year from a married couple charged with money laundering.

The $3.36 billion belonged to James Zhong, 32, of Gainesville and Athens, Georgia. On Friday, Zhong pled guilty to one count of wire fraud, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

“James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 bitcoin from Silk Road,” Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in Monday’s release. “For almost 10 years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery. Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds.”

Prosecutors said Zhong executed a sophisticated scheme to defraud Silk Road of what was about $650,000 worth of bitcoin, based on the value of the cryptocurrency when the fraud took place in September 2012. To execute the plan, prosecutors said Zhong created about nine Silk Road accounts and funded them with an initial deposit of 200 to 2,000 bitcoin. Zhong then triggered 140 transactions in rapid succession to trick the Silk Road withdrawal-processing system into releasing about 50,000 bitcoin into the accounts.

“As an example, on September 19, 2012, Zhong deposited 500 bitcoin into a Silk Road wallet,” prosecutors said. “Less than five seconds after making the initial deposit, Zhong executed five withdrawals of 500 bitcoin in rapid succession—i.e., within the same second—resulting in a net gain of 2,000 bitcoin.”

One of Zhong’s other fraud accounts made a single deposit and more than 50 withdrawals before the account ceased its activity. Within a few days of the transactions, Zhong moved the bitcoin out of Silk Road and consolidated them into two high-value amounts.

When bitcoin performed a hard fork coin split in August 2017, Zhong’s 50,000 bitcoin windfall received a matching number of bitcoin cash coins. Zhong used an overseas exchange to convert the bitcoin cash to about 3,500 bitcoin, bringing his total take to roughly 53,500 bitcoin.

Starting earlier this year, Zhong started voluntarily surrendering a little more than 1,004 bitcoin to federal authorities.

Silk Road operated from 2011 to 2013 and was used to trade illicit goods around the world. The platform’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.

IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher said that once Zhong completed the heist, “he attempted to hide his spoils through a series of complex transactions which he hoped would be enhanced as he hid behind the mystery of the ‘darknet.’” In reality, the bitcoin blockchain provides a history of every single transaction that forensic investigators can use to trace stolen coins even when they pass through tumblers and other tools designed to obscure their origins.

Even cryptocurrencies with stronger privacy assurances, however, aren’t automatically safe from government seizures. Some of the $3.6 billion recovered in March, for instance, was in the form of monero, a cryptocurrency designed to obfuscate the trails of funds within its blockchain by mixing up the payments of multiple users. Using techniques that still aren’t clear, the IRS was able to recover the monero funds anyway.

Zhong is scheduled to be sentenced on February 22, 2023.

Source

Chlorobenzenes, a chemical that was once used in pesticides and is known to accumulate in soil and water sources, have been detected in traces on a corroded Roman bowl that dates to the Late Iron Age (between 43 and 410 AD). According to the study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports, soil contaminated with chlorobenzenes may continue to be a threat to the preservation of archaeological artifacts buried under the earth.

Chlorobenzenes are synthetic compounds that may be harmful in high concentrations, and most have been banned from usage in the UK due to environmental concerns. However, it is believed that these compounds accumulated in the environment as a result of earlier industrial and agricultural activities. A copper-alloy Roman bowl was discovered in 2016 on a farm in Kent (UK), a site that has been used for agriculture since at least 1936.

Luciana da Costa Carvalho and colleagues analyzed the green and brown-colored corrosion on the bowl to identify their different components. They found elements that were indicative of the changes over time in the soil caused by human activities.

In the green-colored corrosion, the authors found chlorobenzenes were present. The authors also found diethyltoluamide (also known as DEET) in the brown-colored corrosion, a modern compound that is still used in insect repellents.

The authors suggest that the chlorobenzenes were associated with increased corrosion in the Roman bowl. They conclude that even though chlorobenzenes are no longer used in the UK, polluted soil may still threaten the preservation of archaeological material still buried and more research needs to be undertaken to better understand the processes involved.

Source

 

Gigantic extinct sharks have something to tell us from millions of years ago, and paleontologists are only just beginning to unravel that message. In a series of firsts, paleontologists have identified a growing number of paleo-nurseries, ancient sanctuaries where young sharks may have been born and where they grew until they were big enough to survive on their own in the larger sea. It’s a strategy some sharks continue to employ today, meaning it has been a successful evolutionary tactic for at least 23 million years.

 

The most abundant remnants we have of these apex predators are the teeth they shed over their lifetime. Cartilage, the major component of internal shark structure, doesn’t tend to survive fossilization. Given the considerable dearth of fossils, how can paleontologists ascertain the types and ages of extinct sharks? And how are paleontologists able to determine the site of a paleo-nursery from tens of millions of years ago in areas that are no longer underwater?

Answers with teeth

The answers lie with fossil teeth, from which paleontologists can determine species and estimate sizes—and, remarkably, the temperature and salinity of the water where the sharks lived. Although scientists aren’t yet able to establish the precise age of a shark from a fossil tooth, they can narrow it down to whether the shark was a neonate, juvenile, or adult, according to Matthew Gibson, the natural history curator at The Charleston Museum.

 

That’s critical because the most important clue to determining whether an area was once a paleo-nursery is a preponderance of teeth from young sharks. And it takes a lot of individual measurements and analysis on every single tooth from a site to determine what species, what age group, and what size of shark each tooth represents.

 

Despite the effort required, the work is being done. The first known megalodon paleo-nursery was found in Panama and described in a paper published in 2010. Megalodon (Otodus megalodon) tends to be the only terrifying, toothy leviathan in our collective imagination when it comes to extinct sharks. But there were a number of enormous ancient shark species over the past million years, all of which are known as megatoothed sharks. Since that discovery 12 years ago, more paleo-nurseries from other megatoothed sharks have been found throughout the world in countries like Peru, Chile, Spain, and the East Coast of the US. In 2020, the first paleo-nursery for ancient great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) was discovered in Chile. And in 2021, the first paleo-nursery for another megatoothed species, Carcharocles angustidens, was confirmed in South Carolina.

 

The three teams who discovered these new paleo-nurseries looked at significant numbers of fossil teeth: 28 megalodon teeth from Panama, 136 Carcharocles angustidens teeth from two sites in South Carolina, and a staggering 234 ancient great white shark teeth from three separate sites in Chile and Peru, 69 of which were from the paleo-nursery in Chile.

 

Dr. Jaime Villafaña is a paleontologist at the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) in Coquimbo, Chile, and the lead author of the ancient great white shark paper. He admitted that studying 234 teeth “was an incredible amount of work. The measurements were taken by Alonso Alvarado and supervised by me... This process and the associated tasks (database and images preparation) were performed in four months.”

What makes a nursery?

The idea that a large number of fossilized teeth represents the presence of a large number of sharks is, according to Gibson and co-author Dr. Robert Boessenecker of the Carcharocles angustidens paleo-nursery paper, partly an assumption.

 

“Although sharks do lose and regrow teeth throughout their lives,” Gibson explained by email, “it seems less likely that a single shark stayed in [one place] and lost teeth at such a regular rate that the teeth all became fossilized and did not get moved elsewhere by ocean currents and tidal action. What is more likely is C. angustidens teeth are just common enough at these localities due to how many sharks were living there and shedding teeth. If a population is present in the locality regularly, the probability of deposition and fossilization of shed teeth would have been higher, even after some are moved elsewhere by currents.”

 

Dr. Boessenecker, a research fellow at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History, added that “we can't ever really prove that separate teeth came from the same individual unless we find an associated tooth set. So we assume they all represent different individuals. That being said, some sharks lose multiple teeth per feeding event, but the odds of these teeth representing dramatically less than that number of individuals is probably quite low.”

 

Other important clues to determining whether a location is the site of a paleo-nursery originate from today’s shark species and their behavior. Some existing shark nurseries are found within areas that offer both protection and food for growing babies. These are two key aspects that paleontologists find mirrored in the fossil record: shallow ancient marine environments filled with nutritional resources.

The presence of certain fossil invertebrates, such as mollusks, provides evidence that the ancient marine environments were shallow, and fish fossils suggest potential food for growing sharks. The absence of mammal fossils such as seals or sea cows in these areas is also an important clue, according to more than one paper, as some of today’s sharks only consume mammals once they reach adulthood.

 

Protection from ancient predators in these environments seems incredibly important, particularly if neonates and juveniles lived in areas with other ancient sharks. Such was undoubtedly the case for megalodon in Panama, where over 400 teeth from at least 16 different species of fossil shark were also uncovered. Young megalodons were not tiny. Neonates in this megalodon paleo-nursery were estimated to be as long as 2 meters (approximately 6 feet); juveniles—whose fossil teeth were more plentiful in this assemblage—were estimated at 2 to 10.5 meters (about 6 to 34 feet).

 

Co-existing predators, however, were likely capable of handling babies that size. Among the ancient predators found were the great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) and an extinct form of weasel shark (Hemipristis serra).

Competing with amateurs

The team working in South Carolina faced a non-scientific challenge when identifying paleo-nurseries: trophy-hunting collectors. These collectors impact the information paleontologists can obtain about a fossil shark tooth assemblage.

 

“Shark tooth hunting is a big hobby here,” Gibson wrote about South Carolina, “and I have personally visited collectors that have shark teeth prominently displayed throughout their house. Collectors, in my experience, are more likely to donate the ‘small’ or broken specimens than ‘the big ones.’ However, this does create a bias so they can’t really be used for this kind of study.”

 

“It's a real problem whenever collectors find fossils that are scientifically significant and also have perceived financial or prestige value,” Dr. Boessenecker agreed in a separate email. “Collectors love their shark teeth, and it can be very hard to convince some collectors of the benefit of relinquishing fossils. Sometimes it's not even worth trying—but you never know until you ask.”

When collectors take bigger teeth out of a site, leaving only smaller teeth in place, this changes the true fossil representation of that location. So if both scientists and collectors are working on a site, the collectors, according to Dr. Boessenecker, “are almost always going to score the big teeth before we ever get a chance to make it out there—they outnumber us about 1,000 to 1 in the Charleston area. In the case of the first sample from the 1970s,” he wrote, referencing one of the assemblages he and the team studied, “the teeth were all collected during a controlled excavation. In our case, private collectors were not allowed by the landowner, and we had exclusive access to the site.”

Megalodon and other extinct giant sharks started life in nurseries

• Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and Expedia, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday that Twitter will be a “much smaller business” under Elon Musk.

• Diller said he thinks Musk will figure out how to improve Twitter and make it more appealing, but he is not convinced that it will become the next super-app.

Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and Expedia, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday that Twitter, which he said is a toy for Elon Musk, will “much smaller business” under its new owner.

Diller said he believes Musk is “quixotic” but “very rational,” and he thinks Musk will stick by the company.

“You’ve got this extraordinarily wealthy person, and he bought a toy,” Diller said. “He bought a toy, and how long he will use it, like toys, we don’t really know, but he’s not going to walk away I don’t think.”

Diller said he thinks Musk will figure out how to improve Twitter and make it more appealing, but he’s not convinced that it will become the next super-app.

“Twitter will be better, it will be smaller,” he said.

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, took ownership of Twitter on Oct. 28 and made his mark immediately. He dismissed CEO Parag Agrawal, as well as Twitter’s chief financial officer and its head of legal, public policy and trust and safety upon taking over the company. Twitter laid off approximately half of its employees days later.

Since closing the $44 billion deal, Musk has laid out a series of ideas for a new user verification process for Twitter through its subscription service Twitter Blue.

In a thread of tweets, Musk said he will give “power to the people” by offering verification through Twitter Blue for $8 a month. He said participants will get priority in mentions, replies and search, receive half as many ads, and will be able to tweet long videos and audio.

Twitter began rolling out changes to its platform for some users on Saturday in preparation for the launch of its revamped Twitter Blue service, but reportedly plans to delay the launch the until after Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Source

Whatever are the odds of winning two six-figure lottery prizes within just a few days of each other, a woman in Delaware recently beat them.

The 70-year-old woman at the center of a viral story coming out of the Delaware state lottery benefited from a stroke of good fortune when in the middle of October she went to a gasoline station and bought two scratch-off tickets. One of the Instant Game tickets was a $100,000 winner, according to a news release from state lottery officials.

Officials said the woman, from the community of Newark, waited about a week until 20 October to redeem her ticket and claim her prize at the lottery’s headquarters in Delaware’s capital, Dover.

She celebrated on her way home by buying three more Serious Money tickets at a Dover convenience store – and one turned out to be a $300,000 top prize winner.

The woman, who asked the lottery to not publicly release her name so she could preserve her privacy after the windfall, had made the fateful trip with her best friend. Neither could believe the good fortune at play.

“We just sat there in disbelief,” the woman said, according to the state lottery’s news release. “It was absolute insanity.”

The woman and her friend immediately drove back to the state lottery’s headquarters and claimed the prize, which brought her winnings for the day to $400,000. She added that it was her biggest Delaware lottery victory since she started playing it seven years ago.

The lucky lottery winner reportedly told officials she plans to put most of her 20 October winnings into her retirement fund. She also doesn’t seem keen on giving up playing the lottery, telling its administrators: “I love scratching Instant Game tickets!” when they asked her if there was anything else she wanted to tell the public about her victories in quick succession.

Of course, most lottery players won’t ever experience a win like that. Delaware lottery officials estimate that players have a one in 120,000 chance of winning the $100,000 Instant Game prize, and the odds of taking the $300,000 Serious Money reward are thought to be one in 150,000.

Lottery winnings are taxed like regular income in most of the US – but Delaware is a notable exception. There, such winnings aren’t subject to the state income tax rate of 6.6%, making Delaware one of the best places to win the lottery.

Delaware officials say their lottery – which started in 1975 – has contributed nearly $6bn to the state’s general fund, which finances a variety of public services.

Source

The heated back-and-forth began when Musk declared in a tweet, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”

“Accurate to who?” replied Dorsey, a co-founder and former CEO of the social media site, which Musk bought for an estimated $44 billion.

“As judged by the people of Twitter via Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch),” Musk wrote, referring to the feature that allows users to add notes on tweets they find misleading.

Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO a year ago, then took aim over the new name.

“I still think…Birdwatch is a far better name. And ‘more informative’ a far better goal,” he wrote.

“Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission,” Musk said in a tweet.
AP

“Birdwatch gives me the creeps,” Musk replied.

“Community notes is the most boring Facebook name ever,” Dorsey continued, prompting Musk to hit back, “Not everything needs to have ‘bird’ in the name!”

“Too many bird groups fighting each internally other at Twitter. Angry Birds,” Musk added, using the name of the popular video game to apparently suggest infighting at Twitter.

“Agree, but that wasn’t reason for the name. Descriptive is always better, but don’t think ‘community’ or ‘notes’ is the right descriptor,” Dorsey wrote back.

The sparring between the two tech moguls came shortly after The Post ran a story about how Twitter staffers — many of whom were fired by Musk on Friday — “hate” Dorsey.

“Jack is hated at Twitter,” a source told The Post. “They blame what happened with Elon taking over the company on Jack. Parag [Agrawal, the recently-ousted head of Twitter] and the board think he is this really bad character.”

Dorsey on Saturday acknowledged that many employees are “angry” with him.

“Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient,” Dorsey tweeted early Saturday.

“They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that,” he wrote.

“I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter,” Dorsey added. “I don’t expect that to be mutual in this moment…or ever…and I understand,” Dorsey added.

Dorsey pressed the Tesla billionaire about his tweet on the social media platform’s “mission” on accuracy.

Dorsey recently launched a social media company called Bluesky, a decentralized platform that promises to give users and developers more autonomy.

Meanwhile, Twitter is delaying doling out blue verification check marks as part of its new $8-a-month subscription service until after Tuesday’s elections, according to the New York Times.

Musk cut Twitter’s workforce Friday to stabilize finances, saying in a tweet he had no choice because the company was losing $4 million every day – but in an embarrassing flub, it reportedly pleaded for some of those workers to take their old jobs back over the weekend.

Dozens of laid-off staffers were asked back because some were cut by mistake and others were terminated before management realized their work and experience are potentially valuable to help build new features Musk wants for the site, according to a Bloomberg report. Some 3,700 workers lost their job Friday.

Source

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere, the study involved 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020 in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite immediate treatment, fewer than 10% recovered sufficiently to be discharged from hospital.

Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, intentions and thoughts toward others. The researchers found these experiences of death to be different from hallucinations, delusions, illusions, dreams or CPR-induced consciousness.

The work also included tests for hidden brain activity. A key finding was the discovery of spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves up to an hour into CPR. Some of these brain waves normally occur when people are conscious and performing higher mental functions, including thinking, memory retrieval, and conscious perception.

"These recalled experiences and brain wave changes may be the first signs of the so-called near-death experience, and we have captured them for the first time in a large study," says Sam Parnia, MD, Ph.D., the lead study investigator and an intensive care physician, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health, as well as the organization's director of critical care and resuscitation research."Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress."

Identifying measureable electrical signs of lucid and heightened brain activity, together with similar stories of recalled death experiences, suggests that the human sense of self and consciousness, much like other biological body functions, may not stop completely around the time of death, adds Parnia.

"These lucid experiences cannot be considered a trick of a disordered or dying brain, but rather a unique human experience that emerges on the brink death," says Parnia. As the brain is shutting down, many of its natural braking systems are released. Known as disinhibition, this provides access to the depths of a person's consciousness, including stored memories, thoughts from early childhood to death, and other aspects of reality. While no one knows the evolutionary purpose of this phenomenon, it clearly reveals "intriguing questions about human consciousness, even at death," says Parnia.

The study authors conclude that although studies to date have not been able to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients' experiences and claims of awareness in relation to death, it has been impossible to disclaim them either. They say recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine empirical investigation without prejudice.

Researchers plan to present their study findings at a resuscitation science symposium that is part of the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2022 taking place in Chicago on Nov. 6.

Some 25 hospitals in the U.S. and U.K. participated in the study, called AWARE II. Only hospitalized patients were enrolled to standardize the CPR and resuscitation methods used after cardiac arrest, as well as the recordings made of brain activity. Additional testimonies from 126 community survivors of cardiac arrest with self-reported memories were also examined in this study to provide greater understanding of the themes related to the recalled experience of death.

Parnia says further research is needed to more precisely define biomarkers of what is considered to be clinical consciousness, the human recalled experience of death, and to monitor the long-term psychological effects of resuscitation after cardiac arrest.

Source

He paused and stared into the white foam. With a lunge, Reed, a 60-year-old fisherman who belongs to the Karuk Tribe, thrust his dip net into the Klamath’s swirling current.

His back and his ropey arms strained against the fir poles as he heaved up two Chinook salmon that thrashed and twisted inside the net. By the end of the morning, Reed and his son-in-law Asa Donahue caught seven salmon.

These days that’s considered a good haul. But it’s barely one-tenth of what they might have caught on a September morning 30 years ago.

“It’s been like a death in the family the last five, six years down here,” Reed said.

Reed and his fellow Karuk blame the decline of the fish, in large part, on the descendants of white settlers who live upstream. They say agriculture continues to take too much water out of the Klamath and from two important spawning tributaries that flow into it. Furthermore, they contend state and federal regulators aren’t cracking down aggressively enough to ensure the fish survive.

The tribe was furious when, in mid-August, a group of farmers shrugged off the threat of tens of thousands of dollars in state fines and drained much of the water out of one of the Klamath’s tributaries, a move that state biologists said likely killed protected salmon.

“It’s just like a kick in the teeth,” said Arron “Troy” Hockaday, a Karuk Tribe councilman. “Because to me, it’s like they just didn’t care.”

The native people of the Klamath River say it was yet another example of how the system is still disproportionately tilted toward the interests of white farmers. Efforts by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration to prioritize tribal input in environmental policy and return natural resources that had been stolen haven’t moved fast enough for the tribes.

The Karuk believe the fate of the world is at stake.

The Klamath’s annual salmon runs aren’t just about food for the tribe, though that’s part of why a handful of tribal fishermen risk their lives on those slippery rocks using more or less the same gear and techniques that their ancestors used for centuries.

These fish are intertwined with their cultural identity and religion — what it means to be Karuk.

The Karuk believe that if the salmon disappear, so will they.

So will everyone.

“When the fish go,” Reed said, “that’s the end of the world.”

And what Reed’s seen these past few years has him worried that the apocalypse is nearly here.

The subjugation of the Klamath River

Depending on the estimate, the Karuk are the state’s second or third largest federally recognized tribe, with close to 4,000 enrolled members.

Drug, crime and alcohol abuse along the river are a long-standing problem. More than half of the Karuk live below the federal poverty line — problems that many Karuk trace back to before California’s statehood in 1850.

Before settlers swarmed California to mine for gold, cut down trees, grow crops and raise cattle, the Karuk inhabited more than 100 villages along the middle stretch of the 257-mile Klamath River in what’s now Siskiyou and Humboldt counties along California’s northern border.

The annual cycles of migrating coho, chum, pink and Chinook salmon, sturgeon, lamprey and steelhead heading upriver to spawn provided the Karuk and their neighboring tribes a year-round source of food, supplemented by deer and elk and plants such as acorns.

Settlers during California’s Gold Rush brought with them disease and subjugation. Native people were forced from their lands. Their children were taken from their families and placed in boarding schools. It’s only been in recent years that the accounts of rapes and abuse at the boarding schools have been widely shared outside of American Indian tribes.

At the same time, the white settlers and their descendants dramatically altered the free-flowing rivers that were so important to the Karuk and other local tribes.

Miners removed massive amounts of rocks and sand from rivers in their search for gold. Huge piles of these “tailings” still stand along the river channels. They contaminated the rivers with mercury and other toxins they used in the mining process. A century and a half later, those toxins are still being detected in Klamath Basin fish.

In the early 1900s, on the Klamath, power companies began installing massive hydroelectric dams, blocking fish from swimming to more than 100 miles of their spawning grounds. Below the dams, two important cold-water tributaries that provide habitat for spawning fish — the Scott and Shasta rivers — have for more than a century been siphoned off to grow hay and graze cattle.

The salmon have paid the price. Pink and chum salmon no longer swim in the Klamath. Spring-run Chinook and coho are on the edge of extinction. The fall run of Chinook, partly propped up by a hatchery below Iron Gate Dam, is the last remaining salmon fishery on the river.

State fishing regulations say the Karuk tribe can catch fall-run Chinook at Ishi Pishi Falls using their traditional dip nets.

In recent years, there have been so few fish in the river that the Karuk have been forced to ask the tribes downstream that have better fishing rights for a few of the salmon they caught so the Karuk could use them in their annual World Renewal ceremonies, which are timed with the salmon’s migration.

It was a humiliating experience for the Karuk fishermen. They consider it a sacred duty — a tradition passed from father to son — to catch fish for the ceremonies and to supply salmon to the tribe.

The Karuk, unlike their downstream neighbors, the Hoopa Valley and Yurok tribes, don’t have a reservation.

Without a large tract of land near the river to call their own, tribal members say gathering for the annual ceremonies help them keep their communities, traditions and religion alive.

But when the salmon don’t show up, it’s hard to be Karuk.

The boys can’t learn how to fish from their fathers. The tribal elders who come for the ceremonies may not get to know the young men tasked with bringing them gifts of salmon that the boys haul up the canyon from the river.

“You can’t teach your kids to do the things we do without the fish,” said Chook-chook Hillman, whose son at 13 had his first opportunity this fall to haul fish up the trail to the tribe’s ceremonial site. The experience only came about because a few fish showed up this year.

As he sat beside the river, Hockaday, the tribal councilman, worried about the future.

“I want to watch my grandson, who’s 1-year-old today, come up with fish and say, ‘Hey, Papa, here’s your fish,’ while his dad is down here fishing for them,” he said.

The Karuk and other tribes in the area say that in years when the fish don’t show up, it contributes to a troublingly high suicide rate among tribal members. The Yurok Tribe reported a suicide rate that was nearly 14 times the national average between 2015 and 2017.

As a fisherman, Reed understands those stressors better than most.

“This is all I have to keep my spirit going,” Reed said.

Tribes, farmers wrestle over water

The Karuk and environmental groups have been arguing for years that dams on the Klamath should be removed. California and Oregon have settled on a plan to tear four of the dams down to “right some wrongs, address some of our historic mistakes,” as Gov. Newsom put it at the time.

Demolition could begin next year.

Separately, the Karuk want state and federal regulators to force farmers on the Scott and Shasta rivers to leave more water for fish in those Klamath tributaries.

Getting regulators on board is one thing, but the events from earlier this summer show limits of their power when challenged by uncooperative farmers.

For a week, the farmers pumped nearly two-thirds of the water flowing down the Shasta — a move that state biologists said likely killed juvenile coho protected under the state and federal endangered species acts.

Jim Scala, the president of the Shasta River Water Association, said he felt he had no choice but to start pumping when his stock ponds dried up and his grazing lands died from not being irrigated.

Scala said he made his decision despite having spoken in the past with tribal members about their worries.

Scala said one of the Karuk told him, “‘My grandson ain’t gonna be able to fish. I’ll never be able to show him how to fish. We won’t be able to catch the fish.’ Well, I understand that. But what about me? My sons and grandsons will not be able to take over this ranch. And that’s our livelihood.”

Hockaday, the Karuk tribal councilman, said Scala’s choice represented another example of whites taking resources from struggling native people.

“They’re saying we’re taking their water and their rights from them,” Hockaday said. “But when’s enough? When do we stop giving? When is it time for them to stop?”

The Karuk say that no matter how dry it is, no matter how poor the salmon runs are, the farmers on the Scott River also never seem to sacrifice. The Scott flows into the Klamath a few miles downstream of the Shasta. Crop reports filed with local agriculture officials show the amount of hay grown in the valley doesn’t change much from year to year.

“They’ve never stopped growing the same amount of crops,” Reed said.

But Jeff Fowle, a rancher in the Scott Valley, said those stats don’t tell the whole story.

He said Scott Valley ranchers have been using far less water to irrigate their crops in recent years.

They’ve switched to more efficient irrigation systems. They’ve cut their water use to comply with the state’s drought curtailment orders. They’ve restored habitat along the river, Fowle said.

“We’ve been trying to be holistic in our management,” Fowle said. “Good for us. Good for the environment. Good for the fish. And we keep getting hit with a hammer.”

The Karuk aren’t buying it.

“They’re bragging about using zero surface water,” Reed said of the farmers’ cutbacks. “But I’m seeing sprinklers. When it’s hotter than hell, the sprinklers are going.”

After recently driving through the miles of green alfalfa and hay fields in the Scott Valley, Reed said it was as if “there’s a river flowing out onto agriculture.”

He understands that the farmers are just trying to make a living, but Reed believes their methods aren’t sustainable in a rapidly declining world.

“Ag’s going to be gone if we don’t monitor them,” he said. “The same way our fish will be gone.”

———

©2022 The Sacramento Bee. Visit sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Tiny amounts - equivalent to a couple of spoonfuls - are being tested to see how it performs inside the body.

The bulk of blood transfusions will always rely on people regularly rolling up their sleeve to donate.

But the ultimate goal is to manufacture vital, but ultra-rare, blood groups that are hard to get hold of.

These are necessary for people who depend on regular blood transfusions for conditions such as sickle cell anaemia.

If the blood is not a precise match then the body starts to reject it and the treatment fails. This level of tissue-matching goes beyond the well-known A, B, AB and O blood groups.

Prof Ashley Toye, from the University of Bristol, said some groups were "really, really rare" and there "might only be 10 people in the country" able to donate.

At the moment, there are only three units of the "Bombay" blood group - first identified in India - in stock across the whole of the UK.  

A laboratory-grown red blood cell, which carriers oxygen and carbon dioxide around the body

So how is the blood grown?

The research project combines teams in Bristol, Cambridge, London and at NHS Blood and Transplant. It focuses on the red blood cells that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.

This is how it works:

•     They start with a normal donation of a pint of blood (around 470ml)

•     Magnetic beads are used to fish out flexible stem cells that are capable of becoming a red blood cell

•     These stem cells are encouraged to grow in large numbers in the labs

•     And are then guided to become red blood cells

The process takes about three weeks and an initial pool of around half a million stem cells results in 50 billion red blood cells.

These are filtered down to get around 15 billion red blood cells that are at the right stage of development to transplant.

"We want to make as much blood as possible in the future, so the vision in my head is a room full of machines producing it continually from a normal blood donation," Prof Toye told me.

The first two people have taken part in the trial, which aims to test the blood in at least 10 healthy volunteers. They will get two donations of 5-10mls at least four months apart - one of normal blood and one of lab-grown blood.

The blood has been tagged with a radioactive substance, often used in medical procedures, so scientists can see how long it lasts in the body.

It is hoped the lab-grown blood will be more potent than normal.

Red blood cells normally last for around 120 days before they need to be replaced. A typical blood donation contains a mix of young and old red blood cells, whereas the lab-grown blood is all freshly made so should last the full 120 days. The researchers suspect this could allow both smaller and less frequent donations in the future.

However, there are considerable financial and technological challenges.

The average blood donation costs the NHS around £130. Growing blood will cost vastly more, although the team will not say how much.

Another challenge is the harvested stem cells eventually exhaust themselves, which limits the amount of blood that be grown. It will take more research to produce the volumes that would be needed clinically.

Dr Farrukh Shah, the medical director of transfusion at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "This world-leading research lays the groundwork for the manufacture of red blood cells that can safely be used to transfuse people with disorders like sickle cell.

"The potential for this work to benefit hard to transfuse patients is very significant."

Source

Twitter is delaying doling out blue verification check marks as part of its new subscription service until after Tuesday’s elections — while the company is already asking some fired workers to come back, reports say.

The social-media giant, bought by tech billionaire Elon Musk late last month, is holding off on the “verification” part of its new premium $8-a-month subscription service after worries grew that the move could affect Tuesday’s midterm Election Day, according to the New York Times, which cited an internal post it reviewed and two people with knowledge of the decision.

Twitter workers and users conveyed concerns the new service could lead to confusion on Tuesday’s Election Day, with social-media users possibly posing as officials or news outlets and paying for a verification badge in a bid to push out false information.

The company decided to hold off on that aspect of the subscription just one day after it announced the monthly cost requirement as part of the app’s special offering dubbed Twitter Blue.

After a Twitter employee questioned on an internal Slack channel Saturday why the company was “making such a risky change before elections, which has the potential of causing election interference,” a manager replied Sunday, “We’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to Nov. 9, after the election,” the Times reported.

Nov. 9 is Wednesday.

Musk, in a series of tweets Sunday evening, did not address the Times report, but warned there would be harsh consequences for users that impersonate another person on the site.

“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” Musk tweeted.

“Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning,” Musk additionally said. “This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.”

He also tweeted that any name change will lead to a “temporary loss of verified checkmark” and stressed in a reply to another user that while pseudonyms are acceptable, “the high-level principle is just that verified users can’t engage in malicious deception.”

In other tweets, he touted how “Widespread verification will democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people” and Twitter’s mission was “to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world.”

Some celebs used their existing verifications and large followings to expose how the newly proposed blue check system could have pitfalls before Musk’s tweets Sunday.

Comedian Sarah Silverman poked fun at Musk Saturday by temporarily copying his profile photo, cover image and name with only her handle @SarahKSilverman remaining the same, according to a CNN report.

“I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day,” Silverman tweeted Saturday before her account was temporarily restricted Sunday and she then changed it back, CNN reported.

Some fired workers were asked to return to work, a report states.
NurPhoto via Getty Images

TV actress Valerie Bertinelli took similar action by changing her name to Musk’s name Friday and touting Democratic candidates under his name before changing her account back Sunday, CNN reported.

The paid-for verification badge was rolled out as part of the subscription service in a bid to raise funds for the money-losing social network.

Musk, a billionaire and Tesla’s CEO, also cut Twitter’s workforce Friday to stabilize finances, saying in a tweet he had no choice because the company was losing $4 million every day.

But in an embarrassing flub, Twitter reportedly pleaded for some of those workers to take their old jobs back over the weekend.

Dozens of laid off workers were asked back because some were cut by mistake and others were terminated before management realized their work and experience are potentially valuable to help build new features Musk wants for the site, according to a Bloomberg report, which cited two people familiar with the move.

About 3,700 workers lost their job Friday.

A Post e-mail to Twitter seeking comment on both reports was not immediately returned Sunday.

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"Eight billion people, it is a momentous milestone for humanity," said United Nations Population Fund chief Natalia Kanem, hailing an increase in life expectancy and fewer maternal and child deaths.

"Yet, I realize this moment might not be celebrated by all. Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated. I am here to say clearly that the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear."

So, are there too many of us for Earth to sustain?

Many experts say that this is the wrong question. Instead of the fear of overpopulation, we should focus on the overconsumption of the planet's resources by the wealthiest among us.

"Too many for whom, too many for what? If you ask me, am I too many? I don't think so," Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Populations told AFP.

He said the question of how many people Earth can support has two sides: natural limits and human choices.

- 'Stupid and greedy' -

Our choices result in humans consuming far more biological resources, such as forests and land, than the planet can regenerate each year.

The overconsumption of fossil fuels, for example, leads to more carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for global warming.

We would need the biocapacity of 1.75 Earths to sustainably meet the needs of the current population, according to the Global Footprint Network and WWF NGOs.

The most recent UN climate report mentions population growth as one of the main drivers of an increase in greenhouse gases. However, it plays a smaller role than economic growth.

"We are stupid. We lacked foresight. We are greedy. We don't use the information we have. That's where the choices and the problems lie," said Cohen.

However, he rejects the idea that humans are a curse on the planet, saying people should be given better choices.

"Our impact on the planet is driven far more by our behavior than by our numbers," said Jennifer Sciubba, a researcher at the Wilson Center, a think tank.

"It's lazy and damaging to keep going back to overpopulation," she added, as this allows people in wealthy nations, who consume the most, to cast the blame for the planet's woes onto developing countries where population growth is highest.

"Really, it's us. It's me and you, the air conditioning I enjoy, the pool I have outside, and the meat I eat at night that causes so much more damage."

If everyone on the planet lived like a citizen of India, we would only need the capacity of 0.8 Earths a year, according to the Global Footprint Network and WWF. If we all consumed like a resident of the United States, we would need five Earths a year.

The United Nations estimates that our planet will be home to 9.7 billion people by 2050.

- Women's rights -

One of the trickiest questions that arise when discussing population is that of controlling fertility. Even those who believe we need to lower the Earth's population are adamant about protecting women's rights.

Robin Maynard, the executive director of the NGO Population Matters, says there needs to be a decrease in the population, but "only through positive, voluntary, rights-respecting means" and not "deplorable examples" of population control.

The NGO Project Drawdown lists education and family planning among the top 100 solutions to halt global warming.

"A smaller population with sustainable levels of consumption would reduce demands on energy, transportation, materials, food, and natural systems."

Vanessa Perez of the World Resources Institute agrees that "every person that is born on the planet puts additional stress on the planet."

"It is a very thorny issue," she said, adding that we should reject "this idea that the elite capture this narrative and say we need to cap population growth in the South."

She believes the most interesting debate is not about the number of people but "distribution and equity."

Cohen points out that even if we currently produce enough food for 8 billion people, there are still 800 million people who are "chronically undernourished."

"The concept of 'too many' avoids the much more difficult problem, which is: are we using what we know to make the human beings we have as healthy, productive, happy, peaceful, and prosperous as we could?"

Source

Paskalis told Semafor that while Musk seems to be backing Twitter’s global head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, other Twitter employees who worked to keep advertisers comfortable on the contentious platform are now gone.

“We all trust Yoel, but are unsure of that capacity and ecosystem around him to help guide that thinking,” Paskalis wrote. “That introduces a great deal of risk and will drive many, if not most fortune 500 advertisers to pause their investments on the platform for at least the next 90 days in my opinion.”

Ben's view

Paskalis was long a Twitter true-believer in an ad industry that is skeptical of news in general and of Twitter's raucous content in particular.

Twitter is basically an ad business, and Musk has alienated the company's main customers at a moment when they're looking to cut costs anyway. Twitter spending is an easy savings for strapped marketers.

Musk and Roth may ultimately win marketers' trust back. Or this may push the company further toward depending on payments from users to pay its bills.

Source

•     A former Apple employee has admitted to defrauding the company out of $17 million.

•     The ex-worker, Dhirendra Prasad, admitted to running multiple fraud schemes.

•     In one of the schemes, Prasad and a co-conspirator arranged to have Apple pay for its own components.

An ex-Apple employee has admitted to defrauding his former employer out of $17 million, the Justice Department said this week.

The man, Dhirendra Prasad, pleaded guilty in a federal court to conspiracy to commit fraud over multiple schemes targeted at the tech giant, according to a press release from United States Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California.

Prasad pleaded guilty to "one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud," the Attorney's Office said, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail.

Prasad orchestrated the schemes over the course of his 10 years working for the company from 2008 to 2018. His two co-conspirators — Robert Hansen and Don Baker — who both owned vendor companies which worked with Apple, also admitted to their involvement in the schemes, per the press release.

Prasad told the courts he began defrauding Apple in 2011, three years into his employment, by taking kickbacks, stealing parts, altering invoices, and allowing the company to pay for items it never received. He admitted that these actions cost Apple more than $17 million, according to the release.

In one of the schemes, Prasad and Baker arranged to have Apple pay for its own property.

In 2016, Prasad shipped Apple components to one of Baker's businesses, the statement said. Baker then repackaged and sent the components back to Apple with a billing invoice.

Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Prasad also admitted he engaged in tax fraud by funneling illicit payments and issuing sham invoices which cost the company $1.8 million, according to the release.

Prasad will be sentenced in March 2023, the statement said.

Source

Tuesday, November 8

The first launch this week will take off at 4 p.m. UTC from Cape Canaveral in Florida. SpaceX will launch a Falson 9 rocket carrying the Galaxy 31 and Galaxy 32 communications for Intelsat. They will be put in a geostationary orbit – which means they'll look fixed to a person on Earth – where they will provide C-band video and TV broadcast services to the United States. You can watch the launch on the SpaceX launches webpage.

Wednesday, November 9

Next, we have United Launch Alliance (ULA) launching an Atlas V rocket carrying the Joint Polar Satellite System 2 (JPSS 2). The JPSS 2 satellite is going to be run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and will monitor the weather from a polar orbit. The flight will include a demonstration of an inflatable heat shield called Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, also known as LOFTID. This inflatable heat shield could be used to retrieve reusable rocket engines or help deliver heavy cargo to the Red Planet.

The launch should be broadcast on YouTube around the time of launch, which is due at 9:25 a.m. UTC.

Friday, November 11

The third launch of the week is a bit mysterious. At 10:30 p.m. UTC, China will launch a Long March 6A rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The payload is unknown. It’s unlikely this will even be livestreamed, but check it in next week’s recap.

Saturday, November 12

The final launch of the week also comes from China. A Long March 7 rocket will carry the fifth Tianzhou cargo craft to the Chinese Space Station. It’ll be carrying 6.5 tonnes of cargo, which includes two tonnes of propellant. It will also take up a 4U CubeSat CAS-10, which will be deployed in mid-December. This mission will take off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 2:20 a.m. UTC.

Recap

The first launch we got last week was a Long March 5B Y4 rocket carrying the Mengtian module to the Chinese Space Station, you can see footage of the launch below.

A couple of days later, after docking, those aboard the Chinese Space Station entered the Mengtian module.

A day after Mengtian launched, SpaceX launched the USSF-44 mission, which saw a Falcon Heavy launch from Florida.

Next, SpaceX used a Falcon 9 rocket to launch the Eutelsat Hotbird 13G comms satellite.

On November 4, Rocket Lab launched an Electron Rocket carrying the MATS satellite for the Swedish space agency. The satellite will investigate atmospheric waves.

Finally, China launched a Long March 3B carrying the ChinaSat 19 satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The satellite will be used for communications.

That’s all we’ve got this time, check back next week!

TWIRL 90: China preps cargo mission to its "Palace in the Sky"

The mysteries of the astronaut biome

Elon Musk has been urged by the UN to make respect for human rights central to Twitter after suggestions that as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could be sacked.

In an open letter, Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that reports of the new owner laying off the platform’s entire human rights team were “not, from my perspective, an encouraging start”.

Türk said he was writing with “concern and apprehension about our digital public square and Twitter’s role in it”.

He also warned against propagating hate speech and misinformation and highlighted the need to protect user privacy, saying free speech was “not a free pass”.

Since his $44bn takeover last week, Musk has dissolved the company’s board, sacked its CEO, Parag Agrawal, along with senior managers, and began mass layoffs on Friday.

Staff who face losing their jobs in the UK have been given until 9am on Tuesday to nominate a representative for a formal consultation about their employment.

Türk, who posted the open letter on Twitter, where he has more than 25,000 followers, wrote: “Like all companies, Twitter needs to understand the harms associated with its platform and take steps to address them.

“Respect for our shared human rights should set the guardrails for the platform’s use and evolution. In short, I urge you to ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter under your leadership.”

Türk, a UN official who took up his post as the UN rights chief last month, urged Twitter to stand up for the rights to privacy and free expression to the fullest extent possible, under relevant laws, and to transparently report on government pressures that would infringe those rights.

But he warned over the viral spread of harmful disinformation, as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Twitter has a responsibility to avoid amplifying content that results in harms to people’s rights,” Türk said. “There is no place for hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence on Twitter.

“Hate speech has spread like wildfire on social media … with horrific, life-threatening consequences.”

Türk added that the social media company should continue to bar such hatred on the platform, while every effort should be made to remove such content promptly.

“It is vital that Twitter refrain from invasive user tracking and amassing related data and that it resist, to the fullest extent possible under applicable laws, unjustified requests from governments for user data,” he said.

Musk, whose account description on the social media platform reads Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator, has defended the mass sackings by saying employees would receive a three-month payment from the company, which he said was losing more than $4m a day.

He tweeted on Friday evening: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance.”

Source

 Owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. Elon Musk arrives at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in Manhattan, New York City © Thomson Reuters

WHAT DOES U.S. LAW REQUIRE?

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires businesses with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days' notice before engaging in mass layoffs. The law defines mass layoffs as those affecting at least 500 employees during a 30-day period, or at least 50 employees if layoffs impact at least one-third of a company's workforce. Employers can provide workers with 60 days of severance pay in lieu of giving notice.

WHAT ARE THE PENALTIES FOR VIOLATING THE WARN ACT?

An employer found to have violated the WARN Act can be ordered to give laid-off workers 60 days of back pay. The law also imposes penalties of $500 per violation per day. Comparable laws in California and other states impose similar penalties.

WHAT HAS TWITTER BEEN ACCUSED OF?

The lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court late on Thursday claims Twitter locked employees out of their accounts on Thursday, signaling that they will soon lose their jobs. One of the five named plaintiffs, who is based in California, says he was terminated on Nov. 1 without notice or severance pay.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. Late on Friday, Musk tweeted that "everyone exited was offered three months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required."

According to WARN filings provided by the Employment Development Department of the State of California in response to a Reuters request, Twitter gave notice on Friday that it would be cutting 93 staff at its office in Santa Monica, 106 staff in San Jose, and 784 staff in San Francisco. Each notice said the terminations were expected to begin Jan. 4.

The breakdown of staff showed that in San Francisco, the bulk of workers laid off, 592 of the 784, were classified as professionals, with 147 first/mid-level officials and managers, the remainder being senior managers, sales workers and administrative support. The breakdown for Santa Monica and San Jose showed a similar profile of workers.

Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said on Friday that it appeared Twitter was making an effort to comply with the WARN Act by offering to pay some employees through Jan. 4. She said employees were told they would be presented with severance agreements next week requiring them to waive their ability to sue Twitter in exchange for a payout.

Liss-Riordan said she is also investigating "how Twitter chose employees for layoff and whether any discrimination or retaliation was involved."

HAVE OTHER MUSK-RUN COMPANIES BEEN SUED UNDER THE WARN ACT?

Tesla Inc was sued in Texas federal court in June for allegedly violating the WARN Act through an abrupt nationwide purge of its workforce, including 500 layoffs at a factory in Sparks, Nevada. Liss-Riordan also represents the workers in the Tesla case. Tesla has said it was merely "right-sizing" by firing poorly performing workers and not engaging in layoffs that required advance notice.

Last month, a federal judge said Tesla workers must pursue their claims in private arbitration rather than court. The same issue could arise in the lawsuit against Twitter, as more than half of private-sector U.S. workers have signed agreements to arbitrate employment-related legal disputes.

HAS THERE BEEN AN INCREASE IN WARN ACT LITIGATION?

Employers faced a spike in lawsuits brought under the WARN Act and state laws during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many businesses abruptly shuttered or terminated many of their employees. Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Hertz Corp, restaurant chain Hooters and Florida hotel operator Rosen Hotels and Resorts Inc all settled WARN Act lawsuits over pandemic-related layoffs. Rosen settled claims by 3,600 workers for $2.3 million and Enterprise agreed to pay $175,000 to nearly 1,000 workers. Hertz and Hooters paid undisclosed sums.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Additional reporting by Katie Paul; additional writing by Megan Davies; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Matthew Lewis and Lisa Shumaker)

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The top five greenhouse gas–emitting nations—the U.S., China, Russia, Brazil and India—collectively caused $6 trillion in global economic losses between 1990 and 2014, according to a recent study of available data. And those losses haven’t been felt equally. Dartmouth College climate scientists Christopher W. Callahan and Justin S. Mankin used climate models to determine how much of the planet’s warming could be attributed to each country’s emissions and calculated what those emissions have cost every other country. The scientists linked global average temperature rise to the warming in each nation (because some parts of the world are warming faster than others) and then to the associated change in that country’s gross domestic product. “A striking feature of the results was the compounding inequalities,” Callahan says. Whereas wealthier countries burned more fossil fuels to drive economic growth, low-income countries—which are already less able to adapt to a changing climate—bore the brunt of the losses.

Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: “National Attribution of Historical Climate Damages,” by Christopher W. Callahan and Justin S. Mankin, in Climatic Change, Vol. 172; July 12, 2022

Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: “National Attribution of Historical Climate Damages,” by Christopher W. Callahan and Justin S. Mankin, in Climatic Change, Vol. 172; July 12, 2022

This article was originally published with the title "The Cost of Climate Change" in Scientific American 327, 5, 88 (November 2022)

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1122-88

Source

The Guangxi Welfare Lottery said the man, identified only by the pseudonym Li, said he has been playing the lottery for about 10 years and normally uses the numbers 02-15-19-26-27-29-02.

The man recently spent $11 to buy 40 tickets bearing his lucky numbers for the same drawing, and each ticket ended up winning $765,000, for a total of about $30.6 million.

Li showed up to collect his prize wearing a bright yellow cartoon mascot costume. He said he wanted to keep his jackpot a secret from his family.

"I have not told my wife or children. I am concerned that they might feel superior to other people and will not work or study hard in future," Li told lottery officials.

Li donated some of his winnings to a lottery fund that supports vulnerable communities in China. He said he does not yet have plans for the rest of the money.

Source

Fourteen years ago, the mathematicians Dusa McDuff and Felix Schlenk stumbled upon a hidden geometric garden that is only now beginning to flower. The pair were interested in a certain kind of oblong shape, one that could be squeezed and folded up in very particular ways and stuffed inside a ball. They wondered: For a certain shape, how big does the ball need to be?

As their results began to crystallize, at first they didn’t notice the striking patterns emerging. But a colleague who reviewed their work spotted the famed Fibonacci numbers—a list whose entries have popped up again and again in nature and throughout centuries of mathematics. They’re closely related, for example, to the exalted golden ratio, which has been studied in art, architecture, and nature since the ancient Greeks.

Fibonacci numbers “always make mathematicians happy,” said Tara Holm, a mathematician at Cornell University. Their appearance in McDuff and Schlenk’s work, she added, was “some indication that there’s something there there.”

Their landmark result was published in 2012 in the Annals of Mathematics, widely considered the top journal in the field. It revealed the existence of staircase-like structures with infinitely many steps. The size of each step in these “infinite staircases” was a ratio of Fibonacci numbers.

As the staircase ascended, the steps became smaller and smaller, the top of the staircase crushing up against the golden ratio. Neither the golden ratio nor the Fibonacci numbers has any apparent relationship to the problem of fitting a shape inside a ball. It was bizarre to find these numbers lurking within McDuff and Schlenk’s work.

Then earlier this year, McDuff uncovered another clue to this mystery. She and several others revealed not just infinitely more staircases, but intricate fractal structures. Their results are “not something that I remotely expected to see arising naturally in this kind of problem,” said Michael Usher, a professor at the University of Georgia.

The work has revealed hidden patterns in seemingly unrelated areas of math—a reliable sign that something important is afoot.

The Shape of Motion

These problems don’t take place in the familiar world of Euclidean geometry, where objects hold their shape. Instead, they operate by the strange rules of symplectic geometry, where shapes represent physical systems. For example, consider a simple pendulum. At any given moment, the pendulum’s physical state is defined by where it is and how fast it’s going. If you plot all the possibilities for those two values—the pendulum’s location and velocity—you’ll get a symplectic shape that looks like the surface of an infinitely long cylinder.

You can modify symplectic shapes, but only in very particular ways. The end result must reflect the same system. The only thing that can change is how you measure it. These rules ensure that you don’t mess with the underlying physics.

Illustration: Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

McDuff and Schlenk had been trying to figure out when they could fit a symplectic ellipsoid—an elongated blob—inside a ball. This type of problem, known as an embedding problem, is pretty easy in Euclidean geometry, where shapes don’t bend at all. It’s also straightforward in other subfields of geometry, where shapes can bend as much as you like as long as their volume doesn’t change.

Symplectic geometry is more complicated. Here, the answer depends on the ellipsoid’s “eccentricity,” a number that represents how elongated it is. A long, thin shape with a high eccentricity can be easily folded into a more compact shape, like a snake coiling up. When the eccentricity is low, things are less simple.

McDuff and Schlenk’s 2012 paper calculated the radius of the smallest ball that could fit various ellipsoids. Their solution resembled an infinite staircase based on Fibonacci numbers—a sequence of numbers where the next number is always the sum of the previous two.

After McDuff and Schlenk unveiled their results, mathematicians were left wondering: What if you tried embedding your ellipsoid into something other than a ball, like a four-dimensional cube? Would more infinite staircases pop up?

A Fractal Surprise

Results trickled in as researchers uncovered a few infinite staircases here, a few more there. Then in 2019, the Association for Women in Mathematics organized a weeklong workshop in symplectic geometry. At the event, Holm and her collaborator Ana Rita Pires put together a working group that included McDuff and Morgan Weiler, a freshly graduated PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. They set out to embed ellipsoids into a type of shape that has infinitely many incarnations—eventually allowing them to produce infinitely many staircases.

To visualize the shapes that the group studied, remember that symplectic shapes represent a system of moving objects. Because the physical state of an object uses two quantities—position and velocity—symplectic shapes are always described by an even number of variables. In other words, they’re even-dimensional. Since a two-dimensional shape represents just one object moving along a fixed path, shapes that are four-dimensional or more are the most intriguing to mathematicians.

But four-dimensional shapes are impossible to visualize, severely limiting mathematicians’ toolkit. As a partial remedy, researchers can sometimes draw two-dimensional pictures that capture at least some information about the shape. Under the rules for creating these 2D pictures, a four-dimensional ball becomes a right triangle.

The shapes that Holm and Pires’ group analyzed are called Hirzebruch surfaces. Each Hirzebruch surface is obtained by chopping off the top corner of this right triangle. A number, b, measures how much you’ve chopped off. When b is 0, you haven’t cut anything; when it’s 1, you’ve erased nearly the whole triangle.

But the group eventually found their footing, and in October 2020 they posted a paper that excavated infinite staircases for certain values of b.

To create the Cantor set, start with a line segment. Remove the middle third, then remove the middle third of each of the segments that remain. Repeat an infinite number of times, until all that’s left is a set of individual points.Illustration: Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

This past March, McDuff, Weiler, and Nicki Magill—a student of Holm’s who began working with McDuff during the coronavirus pandemic—posted a preprint in which they nearly completed the project of analyzing the embeddings of ellipsoids in Hirzebruch surfaces. “It’s amazing,” said Holm. “It’s so beautiful.”

When they did so, another surprise arose. If you look at all the values of b for which an infinite staircase appears, you get yet another fractal structure—an arrangement of points with features that defy common sense. Called a Cantor set, it has more points than the rational numbers—yet somehow the Cantor set’s points are more spread out.

“They really developed this beautiful picture with the staircase symmetries that I’m still trying to fully absorb,” said Daniel Cristofaro-Gardiner, a mathematician at the University of Maryland.

Although the new work has produced more infinite staircases than any previous results, symplectic embeddings and their accompanying staircases remain mostly a mystery, as Hirzebruch surfaces comprise only a tiny fraction of the possible symplectic shapes. “I still feel like we’re a little bit in the woods and we haven’t quite gotten up to the cloud level where we can sort of see the whole picture,” said Holm. “It’s an exciting moment, because I think we will get there.”

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

Initially, the group’s efforts seemed unlikely to bear fruit. “We spent a week working on it, and we didn’t find anything,” said Weiler, who is now a postdoc at Cornell. By early 2020, they still hadn’t made much headway. McDuff recalled one of Holm’s suggestions for the title of the paper they would write: “No Luck in Finding Staircases.”

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Why it matters: Sources have told Axios that Musk wants to make subscriptions a bigger revenue stream for Twitter, but building that business will take time, and for now, advertising remains the way Twitter keeps its lights on.

Driving the news: What began as a few calls for advertising boycotts this week turned into a chorus, driven by activist groups who said they are frustrated with Musk's lack of attention to safety, especially in terms of targeted hate towards marginalized groups.

• "You can’t come for our money by day, and work to make us unsafe at night," said Color Of Change president Rashad Robinson, who met with Musk earlier this week alongside other groups, including the NAACP.

State of play: Musk has been actively trying to court advertisers, but his efforts so far are being undermined by his actions and tweets, advertisers told Axios.

• Specifically, some have pointed to Musk's tweet last week, which he's since deleted, linking to a widely discredited website's report of a baseless rumor about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband.

• Others have expressed frustration with Musk's focus on product development as a solution for hate speech, rather than policy.

Musk met with a group of over 100 of the top advertisers and agencies in the country on Thursday to talk with them about brand safety.

• A few executives said they were concerned that Musk devoted so much of the meeting, which he joined virtually, to discussing verification and new products, rather than committing to content moderation policies and enforcement.

• “I did not leave that call feeling 100%,” one marketing executive said.

Musk has said that he's committed to brand safety, and tweeted out an overture to advertisers last week, promising not to let Twitter become a "free-for-all hellscape."

• But marketers say his actions don't match his words, and until he takes concrete policy steps, they're proceeding with caution.

• "We do have advertisers who are choosing not to go on record but are quiet quitting to be out of the discourse right now," an agency executive said.

The big picture: Other marketers argue that if Musk was serious about brand safety, he wouldn't have let key leaders on Twitter's advertising team go, including chief customer officer Sarah Personette and chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, and he wouldn't have fired most of Twitter's content moderation staff Friday.

• "Elon, Great chat yesterday, As you heard overwhelmingly from senior advertisers on the call, the issue concerning us all is content moderation and its impact on BRAND SAFETY/SUITABILITY. You say you’re committed to moderation, but you just laid off 75% of the moderation team!," tweeted Lou Paskalis, a veteran advertising trade group official.

• Musk on Friday laid off roughly half of Twitter's entire staff, and teams that focus on trust and safety issues were hit the hardest, per The Verge.

Between the lines: On Friday, Musk tried to blame activist groups for a drop in Twitter's revenue.

• "Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America," Musk tweeted.

Yes, but: Data shows advertisers have been slowly dropping off for many months, even before Musk officially closed the deal, likely due to the economy but also possibly because of the uncertainty caused by Musk's takeover.

• The number of advertisers spending on Twitter went from 3,900 in May to 2,300 in August and most recently. 2,900 in September, according to new data from MediaRadar.

What to watch: Ad agency executives told Axios that in the wake of reports about an uptick of hate speech on the platform, they are advising clients to pause advertising for now.

•  In the future, reviving Donald Trump's banned account could cause more advertisers to pull their dollars.

•  "Trump is the most illustrative of a flashpoint," they said.

The bottom line: It's Musk's behavior, more than activist pressure on its own, that's driving marketers to proceed cautiously with Twitter.

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The big picture: Twitter laid off as many as 3,700 people Friday — about half of its staff — but said the cuts were smaller for the team in charge of preventing the spread of misinformation, per Reuters.

• Meanwhile, advertisers cut their spending as advocacy groups turned up the pressure to boycott Twitter in the wake of the layoffs and increasing hate speech.

What they're saying: "Now what are we all worried about? Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world," Biden said at a Chicago fundraiser Friday.

•  "There's no editors anymore," he added. "How do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?"

Separately, when asked about the layoffs Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the President has been outspoken about "the importance of social media platforms continuing to take steps to reduce hate speech and misinformation."

• "That belief extends to Twitter, it extends to Facebook and any other social media platforms where users can spread misinformation," she said.

Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey apologized Saturday for growing Twitter "too quickly."

• "I realize many are angry with me," he tweeted. "I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that."

• "I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don't expect that to be mutual in this moment...or ever…and I understand."

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Everyone knows the name Teflon, the patented nonstick coating chemical discovered by DuPont in 1938 — which is convenient because the full name for the type of synthetic polymer that includes Teflon, "per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances" (PFAS), is quite the tongue-twister. Although such cookware is beloved by cooks for making cleaning easier, Teflon and other so-called "forever chemicals" in non-stick pans have been turning up in human bodies, and are linked to ailments ranging from high blood pressure and low sperm count to liver disease. It stands to reason that consumers would like PFAS such as Teflon to stay on their cookware and off their food, even though anyone who has prepared a meal knows that does not always happen.

Now, a new study in the journal Science of the Total Environment reveals that a single surface crack in the teflon coating of a frying pan can eject as many as 9,100 plastic particles, more than enough to enter the human body.

Like the chemicals they studied, the scientists behind this breakthrough hail from an organization whose name is a mouthful. Researchers from the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation and Flinders Institute of NanoScale Science and Engineering used Raman imaging and an algorithm model to visualize microplastics and nanoplastics alike on a microscopic scale. Using this data, they identified that 2.3 million microplastics and nanoplastics were released when a frying pan's teflon coating is broken.

"The non-stick coating material Teflon is generally a family member of PFAS," University of Newcastle researcher Dr Cheng Fang, who was involved in the study, said in a press statement. "Given the fact PFAS is a big concern, these Teflon microparticles in our food might be a health concern [and] needs investigating, because we don't know much about these emerging contaminants."

Flinders University researcher Professor Youhong Tang added in the statement that the study is a warning about the danger of not cooking in a safe way. Notably, most nonstick pans have instructions that say not to heat them above medium, though the great variation in home stoves means that even rule-following home cooks might not always succeed at keeping such pans from emitting odorless fumes that have been known to kill birds in poorly ventilated rooms.

"It gives us a strong warning that we must be careful about selecting and using cooking utensils to avoid food contamination," Tang said in the statement. "More research is recommended to address the risk assessment of the Teflon microplastics and nanoplastics, given that Teflon is a family member of PFAS."

In addition to appearing on cooking pans, PFAS can be found in fast food wrappers, popcorn bags and countless other types of commonly-used kitchenware. They are literally inescapable, and that is why the American Heart Association journal Hypertension was so alarmed in June when it studied 1,000 middle-aged women and discovered that "women with higher concentrations of specific PFAS were more likely to develop high blood pressure." More specifically, "women in the highest one-third concentrations of all seven PFAS examined had a 71% increased risk of developing high blood pressure," the study found. High blood pressure can lead to heart attacks and strokes if left untreated.

In another study that isolated seven common PFAS, a report last month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that when pregnant mothers in their first trimester were exposed to a mixture of those PFAS, their biologically male children wound up having "lower sperm concentration, lower total sperm count, and higher proportions of nonprogressive and immotile sperm in young adulthood." Meanwhile a systematic review of scientific literature published in May by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives revealed that there is "a relationship between higher exposure to certain PFAS chemicals and higher blood levels of ALT," or the liver enzyme Alanine Aminotransferease. Study author Liz Costello told Salon at the time that the enzyme is "a good indicator of liver injury." Costello also commented on the ubiquity of PFAS.

"It's very difficult for individuals to control their PFAS exposure – PFAS are in so many products (and water, or food) and often we don't even know we are exposed," Costello explained. "Even when older PFAS are phased out and no longer used, newer PFAS chemicals replace them. You won't usually see these listed on a product label."

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