Good news
The United Nations has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first ever global treaty to ban nuclear weapons and all activities related to them. It's not the end of nuclear weapons - none of the nuclear-capable countries have signed on - but it is a historic milestone in the decades long campaign by civil society groups for disarmament. Conversation
Egypt's cabinet has toughened its laws on female genital mutilation, imposing jail terms of up to 20 years as part of efforts to stamp out the horrifying tradition (90% of Egyptian women between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM). The new law hikes the maximum sentence from the current seven years, and will ban any medical practitioners involved from practicing for five years. Reuters
The UN just released its latest data on family planning. The total number of women and girls around the world using modern contraception now stands at 320 million, with 60 million new users in the last seven years, and nine million in the past year alone. Progress has been particularly strong in Africa, where the number of modern contraceptive users has grown by 66% since 2012. FP2020
Ahead of World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day, there's been some pretty amazing news. More than one billion people have received treatment for at least one NTD every year for the last five years, there are 500 million people who no longer require interventions for any NTDs, and 42 countries, territories and areas have eliminated at least one NTD. Forbes
Even in the face of the pandemic, eleven African countries delivered more than 35 million preventative treatments for NTDs in 2020, with a further 133 million treatments due to be delivered by March this year. That included the administration of more than 7.5 million doses of trachoma-fighting antibiotics in Ethiopia in just one month during December 2020. ReliefWeb
The WHO has now certified 199 countries and territories as being free of Guinea Worm, including 16 formerly endemic countries. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the number of cases was reduced to just 24 between January and October last year, down from 52 in 2019 and a staggering 3.5 million in 1986.
The world’s biggest diesel engine factory in France is facing up the inevitable, and switching to electric motors. By 2025, more than half the plant's production will be dedicated entirely to electric vehicles, a shift that's testament to a car industry in flux. Demand for diesel cars has slumped since 2015, following pollution scandals and tough new EU regulations. Reuters
China more than doubled its construction of clean energy in 2020, reflecting Beijing’s pledge to cut fossil fuel dependence and bring carbon emissions to a peak within a decade. Check out these numbers: 72GW of wind, 48.2GW of solar and 13.2GW of hydro, bringing new capacity to more than 190GW in a single year. This utterly dwarfs anything comparable by any other country. Bloomberg
Climate activists targeting financial institutions have delivered another victory, after three major European banks - Credit Suisse, ING and BNP Paribas - said they will stop providing financing for oil exports from the Ecuadorian Amazon. It's a significant blow: along with UBS, Natixis and Rabobank, they account for 85% of all bank trade-financing for Amazon oil. Bloomberg
A growing wave of grassroots opposition is challenging the Alberta government's plans to pursue open-pit coal mining in the Canadian Rockies. The pressure, which is coming from both sides of the political divide, is working. On the 18th January, Alberta’s energy minister acknowledged opposition to its plans and announced the province was cancelling 11 coal leases and 'pausing' future sales. The Tyee
Remember that awful scene from Samsara of male chicks being killed after they hatch? Germany just became the first country in the world to ban the practice, effective from the 1st January next year. In a second step, the killing of chick embryos in the egg will be prohibited after the sixth day of incubation starting on the 1st January 2024. Watch for other countries to follow suit. AP
In 1994, outraged by the deaths of sea otters and diving seabirds, voters in California banned gill nets. New research has now revealed that not only did the ban prevent the unnecessary suffering of thousands of birds and otters, but also allowed the population of California's harbor porpoises — one of the smallest toothed whales — a chance to rebound. LA Times
Groundfish populations are rebounding off the west coast of the United States. Of the eight stocks that were declared overfished in the early 2000s, all but one, yelloweye rockfish, have been rebuilt today. It's the result of more than two decades of good science and effective regulation, and show's what's possible when nature is given a chance. Recordnet.com
Bison have returned at last to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana. More than 100 years after the federal government illegally fenced off an 18,000-acre parcel of land, the land and the bison have been restored. “We are thrilled this historic wrong has been righted, and that we can re-establish our relationship with the herd we saved from extinction in the 1800s.” High Country News
Indistinguishable from magic
New technologies are expensive and clunky, so people dismiss them. Over time though, they get cheaper and better. Case in point: the first commercial 3D printed house in the United States just went on sale. It's got 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 1,400 square feet of living space plus a garage. Total price? $300,000, about half the price of comparable houses in the same area. 3D Printing Media
In a rare case of regulators actually doing their job, the US Federal Aviation Authority has taken another cautious step on the path to fully autonomous flying machines. It's just given approval to a company called American Robotics to let their drones operate out of line of sight without a human pilot or observer anywhere near the aircraft. The Verge
Scientists from Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed a wearable device powered entirely by the human body. The technology relies on something called a 'biomimetic heat sink' (so cyberpunk right now) which converts the body heat from an adult wrist into electricity and amplifies it to power up an LED panel. No batteries required. Phys.org
KIST again... scientists from the same institute have developed a technique for diagnosing prostate cancer from urine within 20 minutes with almost 100% accuracy. The test measures traces of four selected cancer factors, and then uses an AI algorithm to distinguish correlation. It's a potential gamechanger: current diagnostic accuracy for prostate cancer is as low as 30%. Phys.org
A Dutch artist spent two years implanting millions of red, blue, and ultraviolet LEDs into a field of leeks. Spanning 20,000m2, the 'photobiological technology' project is beautiful and practical: the landscape is visually stunning, while the embedded lights enhance plant growth and cut pesticide use in half. Right up our alley, the perfect intersection between art, design and science. Roosegaarde
Information superhighway
We've been trying to put our finger on what's been bothering us about the resurgence of cyberpunk, and Jon Bailes has finally nailed it for us. All the new stuff is simulacra - there's no coherence in its underlying push and pull factors, no self-awareness that spikes the product with satire. "I have to push aside the preconception that I’m some drooling porn tourist, led by the scent of shotgun smoke and strap-on rubber. How dystopian." Bullet Points Monthly
Environmental scholar, Elin Kelsey has an antidote here for anyone suffering from environmental despair. Yes, the vast scale, complexity, and urgency of biodiversity loss, climate change, and countless other issues are real. Fatalism is not a reality though. It's a mindset, and a widespread and debilitating one. The environmental crisis is also a crisis of hope, and it doesn't have to be. If you're going to read one piece from this newsletter make it this one, please. Haiku
We've been banging this drum for a while now, very glad to see it starting to get more traction. The Dunning-Kruger effect, one of the most famous of human biases, is almost certainly not real. New research is showing that the effect shown in the original study was mostly noise, brought about by the peculiar way in which the authors played with numbers. McGill
This one's for anyone who's worried about whether they've got the right note-taking system or app. Relax - there isn't one. People have been stressing out about this since the ancient Greeks. The human condition, the condition of the tool-using animal, is to be perpetually vulnerable to mistaking instruments for ends. In attempting to hack thought, we usually only manage to interrupt it. Real Life
The New Left Review has a new blog called Sidecar and it's great. Start with this piece by Marco D'Eramo, in which he wonders why the hysterical indignation about fake news seems to have suddenly disappeared. His conclusion? The establishment, which holds the monopoly on legitimate lying, temporarily freaked out about social media, but the panic has now passed.
Humankind
Meet Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, a pair of Californian architects who came up with the idea of placing seesaws in between the metal slats of the US-Mexico border wall to allow children on each side to play together. The inspiration first struck a decade ago, but the bureaucracy involved in setting up an approved art installation on the heavily guarded border proved a nightmare. Despite ten years of obstacles Rael and Fratello refused to let the idea go.
Eventually, they realized the solution was the same cross-border collaboration the project was designed to inspire. With the help of a group of Mexican artists, Colectivo Chopeke, the architects ditched the approval process and went guerrilla. The team redesigned the installation to be assembled as quickly and covertly as possible and in July 2019 the seesaws were smuggled into place with one team coming from El Paso in Texas and the other from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez.
Nicknamed the ‘Teeter-Totter Wall’, the project lasted less than 40 minutes before border patrol intervened, but it was long enough for children on both sides to play together. The brief moment of unity was captured on camera, and now the team are back in the headlines after winning the London Museum’s prestigious Design of the Year Award 2020.
“I think it’s become increasingly clear with the recent events in our country that we don’t need to build walls we need to build bridges,” Virginia San Fratello said, “It speaks to the fact that most people are excited about being together, and about optimism, possibility and the future. And the divisiveness actually comes from the minority.” MOMA
“There are four kinds of people in the world, Ms. Harper. Those who build walls. Those who protect walls. Those who breach walls. And those who tear down walls. Much of life is discovering who you are. When you find out, you also realize there are places you can no longer go, things you can no longer do, words you can no longer say.”
― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe
That's it for this edition. We are off to try and get our heads around mRNA vaccines so we can try explain what the hell is going on out there. Might as well know exactly what we're all going to be injected with right?
Thank you for all the support. We'll see you next week.
Much love,
FC HQ
