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We already live in Facebook’s metaverse

We already live in Facebook’s metaverse

Kyle Chayka writes: Last Thursday, the same day that Facebook’s parent company rebranded under the new name Meta, Mark Zuckerberg gave a meandering tour of the metaverse—the as-yet-hypothetical next phase of the Internet, a unified space that mingles digital and physical reality—in a video presentation for the Facebook Connect 2021 event. The metaverse, which Zuckerberg has previously touted in earnings calls, will be “an embodied Internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it,” he said, as he…

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Is Facebook bad for you? It is for about 360 million users, company surveys suggest

Is Facebook bad for you? It is for about 360 million users, company surveys suggest

The Wall Street Journal reports: Facebook researchers have found that 1 in 8 of its users report engaging in compulsive use of social media that impacts their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. These patterns of what the company calls problematic use mirror what is popularly known as internet addiction. They were perceived by users to be worse on Facebook than any other major social-media platform, which all seek to keep users…

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U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies

U.S. federal appeals court freezes Biden’s vaccine rule for companies

Reuters reports: A U.S. federal appeals court issued a stay Saturday freezing the Biden administration’s efforts to require workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly, citing “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the rule. The ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit comes after numerous Republican-led states filed legal challenges against the new rule, which is set to take effect on Jan 4. In a…

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Sinema’s raking in cash from MLMs. They want to kill her party’s labor bill

Sinema’s raking in cash from MLMs. They want to kill her party’s labor bill

Politico reports: They’ve been derided as spruced up pyramid schemes: Companies that incentivize their own customers to become salespeople for products. Now, these so-called multilevel marketing businesses are flexing their political muscle. And they’re turning to one lawmaker in particular to protect their agenda: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The political action committee associated with Alticor, the parent entity of the health, home and beauty company Amway, gave $2,500 to the Arizona Democrat in late June, as did the PAC for Isagenix,…

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The dark secrets behind big oil’s climate pledges

The dark secrets behind big oil’s climate pledges

The Guardian reports: JPMorgan Chase won glowing headlines last year when the global investment bank unveiled a commitment to counter the climate crisis. The press amplified JPMorgan’s message – sometimes in JPMorgan’s own words. Fortune published a commentary article trumpeting the bank’s plans to “tackle climate change”. Six paragraphs into the piece, the writers noted they worked for the investment firm. (They were actually its top executives.) The bank waited months to detail its plans. In May, it finally outlined…

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The grim stakes of climate crisis for my generation are undeniable

The grim stakes of climate crisis for my generation are undeniable

Maya Ozbayoglu writes :Young people know that our generation already disproportionately feels the effects of the climate crisis. Almost all of the intense heatwaves that have hit Europe since 1950 occurred during my lifetime. It’s likely they will only get worse. Unfortunately, Poland, where I live, has clung to an energy model driven by burning fossil fuels for too long. This irreversible destruction violates our right to life, health, property and values ​​of the natural world. That is why at…

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Trump fever may be breaking

Trump fever may be breaking

Zachary B. Wolf writes: In Tuesday’s elections, Republican candidates surged in blue states, cities rejected major police reform and suburban voters showed their independence. The major takeaways? This is a more moderate and centrist country than activists on either the right or left let on, and Donald Trump fever may be breaking. The system is working. Here’s one thing everybody can be happy about: The election results, for the most part, are not being questioned. That may have a lot…

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Justice Dept. sues Texas over voting restrictions

Justice Dept. sues Texas over voting restrictions

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department on Thursday sued Texas over the state’s new voting law, arguing that the Republican-passed measure would disenfranchise Texans who do not speak English, who have disabilities, who are older or who live outside the United States. The Texas voting restrictions, signed into law in September, include measures barring election officials from sending voters unsolicited absentee ballot applications and from promoting the use of vote by mail, as well as further limiting the…

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Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’

Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’

+972 reports: On Oct. 22, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated six prominent Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations,” citing alleged links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing Palestinian party and militant movement. Despite the severity of the declaration, which was reportedly based on intelligence gathered by the Shin Bet, Israel has failed to present any documents directly or indirectly linking the six organizations to the PFLP or to any violent activity. So…

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The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

The ‘echo chamber’ of Syrian chemical weapons conspiracy theorists

Brian Whitaker writes: Hundreds of people died — many of them in their sleep — when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin struck Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of the Syrian capital early one morning in August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s. Considering that Ghouta was under fire from the Assad regime’s forces at the time, that the casualties were on the rebels’ side and that the regime…

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A new species of human ancestor is named

A new species of human ancestor is named

SciTechDaily reports: An international team of researchers, led by University of Winnipeg paleoanthropologist Dr. Mirjana Roksandic, has announced the naming of a new species of human ancestor, Homo bodoensis. This species lived in Africa during the Middle Pleistocene, around half a million years ago, and was the direct ancestor of modern humans. The Middle Pleistocene (now renamed Chibanian and dated to 774,000-129,000 years ago) is important because it saw the rise of our own species (Homo sapiens) in Africa, our…

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Are financiers greenwashing COP26?

Are financiers greenwashing COP26?

Quartz reports: COP26 is nominally about reducing carbon emissions, but in practice it’s largely about capital—namely moving more of it into clean energy and climate adaptation and away from fossil fuels. In the first two days of the UN’s COP26 climate summit, several rich countries promised to do this, pledging more climate finance to poorer countries: $10 billion from Japan, $7 billion from Italy, $260 million from Ireland. Scotland became the first country to officially take responsibility for “loss and…

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Why past international climate talks have proved ineffective

Why past international climate talks have proved ineffective

Bob Berwyn writes: It’s been more than 30 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first warned the world that greenhouse gases were dangerously warming the global climate. Decades of United Nations climate negotiations followed, culminating in the 2015 Paris agreement. Yet, in that time, humans have pumped more carbon dioxide into the air than in the preceding 240 years. Since that first IPCC report in 1990, emissions have increased 60 percent and the average global temperature has climbed…

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What is deforestation – and is stopping it really possible?

What is deforestation – and is stopping it really possible?

Patrick Greenfield writes: Forests and nature are centre stage at Cop26. On the second day of the Glasgow summit, world leaders are announcing a commitment to halting and reversing deforestation. As the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy, the land sector accounts for 25% of global emissions, with deforestation and forest degradation contributing to half of this. But why do forests matter to the climate, and how can we halt deforestation? What is a forest? There are an…

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