leicsmac

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67539809 The families of three Palestinian students shot on Saturday in the US state of Vermont have urged police to investigate the attack as a hate crime. Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ahmed and Kinnan Abdalhamid were confronted and shot by a man near University of Vermont Campus, Burlington police said. Officers are investigating a possible motive, but say the victims were wearing keffiyeh - a traditional scarf - and speaking Arabic when attacked. A suspect has been arrested. Burlington police have named the suspect as Jason J Eaton, aged 48, reports CBS News, the BBC's media partner in the US. Local police chief Jon Mura earlier said two victims were in a stable condition; the third has suffered much more serious injuries. I would say the "motive" is pretty clear tbh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67508331 The United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned. Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations. The UN body responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC hosts were expected to act without bias or self-interest. The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said "private meetings are private". It declined to comment on what was discussed in the meetings and said its work has been focused on "meaningful climate action". Disappointing, but not exactly surprising.

And thanks to the democratic process, such arguments from ignorance that in no way take into account the salient points made above are indeed often given a wide latitude in policymaking. That's an overall weakness of the current system, not a strength.

Yeah, the Irish diaspora is massive both historical and contemporary. Basic hypocrisy again.

That's fair to say. I think it's me just generally being frustrated at the hypocrisy of people (mostly) tacitly accepting horrible decisions that cause strife in other places (often with unseen benefits to them) and then getting angry at people seeking to flee that strife to better their own lives.

Yep. To extend this, anyone complaining about immigration who hails from a country whose actions contributed to that immigration being necessary. More hypocrisy than can be swallowed.

MSc Science Communication and Public Engagement.

Just come out of my graduation ceremony to find there's life in the old Vardy yet. Now for dinner and a glass of single malt. Brilliant day.

I just wish this were a parody rather than an accurate representation of a statistically significant subset of the population. Or the apathy part, at least. Yes. *cries in science communicator*

Didn't you get the memo? "Real men" don't care about piffling stuff like air pollution, even when it makes them fire blanks.

... and 16 people don't think it's happening at all. Here's hoping at least the majority of those are pisstakers.

Yeah, I think it's one of those sporting instances where it's difficult to not be a hypocrite - I'd be pissed off if it happened to Murray, but struggle to be as concerned with it happening to Nole, simply because of the partisan occasion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67483064 An example of just how important messaging and misinformation about this topic can be.

Nole not a fan of some of the more vociferous parts of the Team GB support, then.

Fair enough then, Hitchens Razor applies, as it often does. I can understand people's fears about state overreach - goodness knows it's as bad as a too hands-off approach and history is pretty clear on that too - so the solution appears to be balance. The problem is that everyone has a different idea of where the balance lies, this discussion is proof of that. NB. When last when interacted you seemed very bound and determined to think that the scientific consensus on climate change and its effects was likewise subjective.

Then it would be nice to see it demonstrated rather than simply stating it is "demonstrably larger" and leave it as that. The number of those new Acts passed - is that larger per capita at other points in history, and more to the point do all of them somehow link to government getting "bigger" in some way? Sorry if this appears like nitpicking but I do tend to treat anything outside of peer-reviewed literature (particularly on something as divisive as this) as rather subjective and down to what people believe, not necessarily what is.

I wouldn't mind seeing this proven rather than just being a subjective opinion, but fair enough - put it this way, compared to a few other countries, both quality of life and disparity of same could be rather better, and those places do tend to have strong social systems in place funded by taxation. However... This is the main problem, yeah. It isn't the taxation itself, it's where it's being taken from that's the issue that perhaps many here may agree on.

Nah, we don't. Every man (or family) an island and no such thing as society, it would seem. On the general topic and with more seriousness, laissez-faire on the part of government has pretty much only resulted in quality of life disparity and misery for the majority in the past and there's no reason to expect otherwise now.

The thing killed more people than half of the things on that list, and more than all wars and conflicts in the 21st Century put together. (Not to mention we have treated all of the above with the greatest seriousness anyway.) Perhaps brutal is overstating it somewhat, but the sheer number of hats on the ground and the short time it took to deliver them merited at least as much attention as it got, and possibly more. NB. I'm assuming the actions of a few "free-thinkers" towards the family of Van-Tam was unacceptable?

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam: "I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut". Well, yes, you might expect a certain level of decency from the public towards a scientific figure who didn't actually do anything wrong except in the fantasies of those who wanted a scapegoat for a brutal act of nature.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67473829 Interesting look at public attitude towards climate change and how people are looking at it right now.

Yeah, it's accelerating in a pretty scary fashion. Here's hoping the discussion actually includes meaningful action, because this is just the beginning.

Said it before but it merits repeating in light of the rhetoric currently being bandied about: If the UK (and other places) are going on about "stopping the boats" now, what's it going to be like if things continue as they are and in a couple of decades there are a few hundred million people in those boats (and whatever other form of transport), due to their homes becoming simply uninhabitable?

Ummmm....