you've earned a 3 day ban for this. do not argue with people when they tell you not to call them dude--and, respectfully, nobody cares whether you think it's gender neutral or not in appellation to other people

Power generation from burning coal, oil and gas fell 17% in the first six months of 2024 compared with the same period the year before, according to climate thinktank Ember. It found the continued shift away from polluting fuels has led to a one-third drop in the sector’s emissions since the first half of 2022.

Chris Rosslowe, an analyst at Ember, said the rise of wind and solar was narrowing the role of fossil fuels. “We are witnessing a historic shift in the power sector, and it is happening rapidly.”

The report found EU power plants burned 24% less coal and 14% less gas from the first half of 2023 to the first half of 2024. The shift comes despite a small uptick in electricity demand that has followed two years of decline linked to the pandemic and Ukraine war.

some people already do this (but with oil companies). one is actually quoted in the article here:

All jokes aside, even advocates of naming extreme heat aren’t sure what the best approach should be.

“I were in charge, I think I would name them Heat Wave Exxon Mobil, Heat Wave Chevron,” said Jeff Goodell, author of the book “The Heat Will Kill You First.”

The book’s title is certainly attention-grabbing, and Goodell said that’s the point — just like putting a name on extreme heat.

basically yeah; in Lebanon and Iraq you historically had/still kind of have sectarian and community paramilitaries because the government isn't functional enough to protect those groups (or intentionally doesn't). and Israel of course has a lot of under-the-surface ideological and religious sectarianism that could eventually break out into violence but historically has not. this would be the first step toward that happening

notably, there now appear to be paramilitaries in the mix here, which seems like an ominous sign for the future stability of Israel. healthy countries don't tend to have these

Life expectancy in the country has now risen above the United States, to 78 years, from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949.

But China's retirement age remains one of the lowest in the world - at 60 for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 for working-class women.

The plan to raise retirement ages is part of a series of resolutions adopted last week at a five-yearly top-level Communist party meeting, known as the Third Plenum.

here are their demands from their letter calling for voluntary recognition:

• A horizontal staffing structure across the organization
• Two union-elected staff voting members to the Board of Directors
• Collective hiring and separation process, including collective decision making around layoffs, reduction of hours, new hires, and furloughs
• Full commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel by December 2024
• Standardized pay progression and yearly Cost-Of-Living Adjustment raises
• Expanded health, commuter, paid leave benefits for all staff
• A Curatorial Committee made up of three union-elected members in addition to the Artistic & Executive Director and the Director of Programs to approve events
• Consolidated HR administered by a third party company
• Two union-elected staff representatives in both the Finance and Strategic Plan committees of the Board of Directors, ensuring budgetary allocations to Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Liberation work and the maintenance and upkeep of to the theater

will be interested to see how many of these they can win through collective bargaining

the IWW successfully unionized three Peet's stores previously, and hopefully this will be their fourth; they filed for a union election on July 8 and seem to be awaiting that.

don't do this

NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. The proposals roughly amount to two main avenues of attack. First, it suggests that the NWS should eliminate its public-facing forecasts, focus on data gathering, and otherwise “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which the authors of the plan imply will improve, not limit, forecasts for all Americans. Then, NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.

we're obviously, contextually talking about deaths from heat, not from all the other stuff that happens on Hajj. don't do this "you cannot be serious" routine when you simultaneously don't even engage with the context of the question

yes; as far as i'm aware there has never been a mass-death event like this in the contemporary history of the Hajj, although it's always been arduous and more potentially deadly when it falls during the summer