Clara Listensprechen @ClaraListensprechen4@social.cleverlibre.org

First atomic-scale 'movie' of microtubules under construction, a key process for cell division https://phys.org/news/2024-02-atomic-scale-movie-microtubules-key.html #science

TIL A couple bought a home in an Edmonton suburb in 1974 after hearing talk about a potential train line from their realtor. The 13km light rail connecting their community to downtown in 30 minutes finally opened in 2023

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/valley-line-southeast-open-to-passengers-1.7018586
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1agmjyi/til_a_couple_bought_a_home_in_an_edmonton_suburb/

Zoom is cutting about 150 jobs, or close to 2% of its workforce https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/01/zoom-layoffs-company-cuts-150-employees-2percent-of-workforce.html

Oh no! Washington DC is turning into shoplifting desert!

Pressley slams Walgreens closures: ‘Racial and economic discrimination’

Pressley said on the House floor this week. “These closures are not arbitrary, and they are not innocent. They are life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination."
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4442318-pressley-slams-walgreens-closures/

Tether Reports Record $2.85B Profit as Biggest Stablecoin Nears $100B Market Cap
L: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/01/31/tether-reports-record-285b-profit-as-biggest-stablecoin-nears-100b-market-cap/
C: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39222062
posted on 2024.02.01 at 17:00:34 (c=0, p=3)

FREE E-BOOK OF THE MONTH FROM UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America

By Lawrence B. Glickman

"Glickman reminds us that consumer activism ‘has been a consistent and long-standing element of American political culture,’ extending back to the 18th Century. . . . [Buying Power is] a rich, provocative, and—given the explosion of consumer activist campaigns in recent years—timely study whose insights into the successes, failures and meanings of consumer activism its practitioners would do well to consider."—Chicago Tribune

I'm not sure if the link will work (you'll have to enter your e-mail for the download link), but--

https://press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=DOWNLOAD&utm_campaign=Free_e-book_February_2024

Continuing the tradition of all the best thinkers and artists and activists being 'cancelled' in Germany.

"Laurie Anderson ends German professorship after criticism of Palestine support"

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/01/laurie-anderson-ends-german-professorship-pro-palestine-letter

9/9 "In the end, the person who bears full responsibility for killing Michael Mohn is his son. But the people who stood behind Justin Mohn whispering all kinds of nonsense — for clicks or votes or whatever they need to prop up their own mediocrity — are splattered with the blood."

Please read the entire column.

8/ "We don’t talk nearly enough about the things we could do to end some of the unfairness in American society — the broken system of educating, or not educating, our young people when they turn 18, and the loss of good job opportunities for those who don’t win the college lottery — that could bring true equity and reduce the fever among angry young white men.

But we also don’t talk enough about how politicians like Dan Patrick block solutions because demagoguery is easier."

7/ "...Society is partly to blame — from the decades of outsourcing good-paying middle-class jobs to make billionaire investors a quick buck, or the slow death of vocational education.

But the bigger problem is an unwillingness to surrender the cultures of patriarchy and white privilege to the majority of Americans they’ve locked out...t’s also this warped mindset that craves a Trump “Red Caesar” dictatorship, to end their losing streak in the culture wars.."

6/ "Why is Swift the ideal vessel for this? ... it’s not just her success but her sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves message that terrifies Dude-Bro Nation...

How else to explain the much more consequential freakout against all forms of diversity, equity, and inclusion — DEI — on college campuses or in the workplace? Right-wingers have even pushed the fact-free claim that the recent mid-air blowout aboard a Boeing-manufactured jet is result of Black pilots"

5/ "Much more common is the lower-grade fever, which can produce a cold sweat and the bizarre delusion that Taylor Swift is the diabolical architect of a modern-day “Da Vinci Code” that binds her once-in-a-century pop superstardom with an intricate plot to rig the NFL to reelect President Joe Biden in November.

In the far-right freakout that’s launched a thousand hot takes..."

4/ "I keep coming back to something that Mohn said in his beheading video, when he declared that the flood of desperate refugees crossing the Rio Grande is actually “an invasion from third world countries. They’re coming here with health issues, they’re uneducated, unemployed, & all they do is commit crime on the streets.”

Oh wait, that wasn’t the beheader. That was GOP lt gov of TX Dan Patrick on Fox spouting rhetoric that might inspire a “Mohn militia” — blaming America’s probs on some Other"

3/ "We’ll never know if the quick arrest of this murder suspect prevented yet another mass shooting by a young, alienated white man...Mohn’s long descent into some sort of mental illness is, unfortunately, nothing new. What is new is broadband multiverse of voices bombarding this young man — not voices in his head, but a pyramid of paranoia that starts with penny-seeking bottom feeders on social media and ends with the bloviation of national broadcasters and politicians who should know better"

2/ "In his most recent 14-plus minute production, Mohn ranted against a variety of usual right-wing suspects — Black Lives Matter, antifa, an invasion of immigrants at the southern border, LGBTQ activists, and an overreaching, all-powerful federal government. You know, the same kind of stuff you’d hear on the Fox Channel in prime time.

The only real difference was that Mohn started his screed Tuesday night by holding aloft the just-severed head of his father..."

"A low-grade fever of misogyny is infecting an epidemic of young white right-wing men talking nonsense about Taylor Swift

A more extreme form causes death - as with the paranoid demagoguery poisoning the brain of the Bucks County beheader"

If @willbunch wrote it, you should read it.© & I thread it. 🧵 1/...

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/taylor-swift-justin-mohn-toxic-masculinity-20240201.html#loaded

😳

Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Gervonta Davis. What do these men have in common? They're all famous boxers... and they all have extensive histories of domestic violence against women.

On Assigned today I wrote about how the boxing world has stood up against trans inclusion on the principle that a man should never hit a woman, and how hollow that declaration is in the context of boxing repeatedly lionizing men who hit women. #trans #sports #news #journalism #LGBTQ

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/mayweather-tyson-gervonte-davis-boxing-domestic-violence

This sounds promising. But where are they going to get the #perovskite? Mining? Synthetic forms? Also -- what happens to the material after its useful life? Landfills?

#Japan's new #SolarPanel technology might forever alter the #renewables market

Story by Devika Rao
January 30, 2024

"Solar panels have traditionally been made with #silicon, over which China has had majority market control. Eager to limit China's stranglehold over the solar market, countries have been searching for a different way to harness the sun. Now, Japanese engineers 'believe they have found one in a type of solar cell that looks and feels like camera film,' according to The Wall Street Journal. The new cell uses perovskite, a crystalline structure formed by minerals that convert sunlight into electricity. The perovskite cell was invented by Japanese scientist and Toin University of Yokohama professor Tsutomu Miyasaka. Iodine is the key element used to manufacture the solar film, of which Japan is the world's second largest producer.

"Research into using perovskite for solar power has been happening during the past decade, however, the structure was less efficient than the typical silicone panels and would degrade under humid conditions. 'Silicon solar cells are great because they are very efficient and can last for a very long time, but the high efficiency comes with a high cost,' Xiwen Gong, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, who studies perovskite semiconductors, said in a statement. 'To make high-purity silicon, temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius are needed. Otherwise, the efficiency won't be as good.'

"To boost efficiency, perovskite was previously used in tandem cells inside glass-covered silicon panels. But now, technology has allowed silicon-free perovskite cells to match traditional silicon-panel efficiency. While humidity remains an issue, the perovskite panels have the potential to be more widely applied. The panels themselves are thin, light and flexible, unlike their silicon counterparts. 'Let's say you live in an apartment and don't have your own roof. You can still put the perovskite cells on your balcony,' Miyasaka told the Journal. 'Think of [them] as a household appliance.'"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/japan-s-new-solar-panel-technology-might-forever-alter-the-renewables-market/ar-BB1htAFL?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=8ea75fbf729f4c23afee62b4c2093156&ei=11

#RenewablesNow #RethinkNotRestart #SolarPower