Energy,
Renewables
Video:
When it comes to how we
consume energy, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news? Around 86% of
global energy still comes from fossil fuels, which pollutes the planet and
stokes climate change.
The good news? In the 21st
Century, we’re poised to use more renewable energy sources than ever before,
including those from wind or water. Solar energy alone saw a 664% increase between 2010 and 2015.
But where in the world will
all this renewable power come from?
LGBTQ
So-called “conversion therapy,” the practice of trying to
change a person’s sexual orientation (almost always from gay or bisexual to
straight), has a history of damaging, scientifically unfounded approaches. In The
Inheritance of Shame, Peter Gajdics describes being pinned down by two other men
as his psychiatrist screams at him, mocking him for having sex with other men.
Other first-person accounts—of men in the U.S., and more recently, of men in China as well as women in Ecuador—recount similarly violent, coercive
experiences.
In the
U.S., state governments are beginning to outlaw conversion therapy in growing
numbers. California became the first to do so in 2012. Eight other states have
banned it in some form since. In 2017 alone, Nevada, New Mexico, and
Connecticut have signed their own bans into law. And two weeks ago, a long-anticipated
bill passed the Rhode Island Senate.
“We’ve gone from kind of a trickle to what seems
to be more of a stream,” said Scott McCoy, senior policy counsel at the
Southern Poverty Law Center. SPLC filed the suit against JONAH, or Jews
Offering New Alternatives for Healing, the conversion-therapy group involved
with Unger’s treatment. The widely covered case was the first consumer-fraud
case heard against the use of conversion therapy in the U.S.
Work, Productivity
When I was working as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, my commute
used to be the distance from the bedroom to the home office. When I lived in
Hong Kong as a television reporter, that distance expanded to 15 minutes.
Nowadays, I'm lucky if I make
it into work in an hour. The price of fresh air, a spacious home and a good
public school system is spending every morning crammed in a boxcar with
thousands of others making the same sacrifice.
This same commute is about to
get even more hellish--and interminably long--with the track repairs being made
at Penn Station, one of the main transit hubs in New York City. Have I
considered throwing in the towel and moving into the city? Yes. However, two
angry teenaged boys who will likely never forgive me for uprooting them are
standing in the way.
So in the meantime, I've figured out a few ways to stay productive
when faced with hours of time on the road:
Poetry, Art, War
Newman’s 2016 collection “Led From a Distance,” where “Soon” was first published, is
all about the distance of modern-day warfare. “We just know of war what is
presented on our screens,” Newman said. “Even drone operators — we’re all
operating from a distance now. But we’re all affected by it, even if we don’t
see it.”
It would be useful, Newman said, if we better
understood how the countries we go to war with are often a lot like
us. “Bombs falling missiles / skimming over suburbs / so much like our own,” he
writes. “It could be our streets [at war], and it might well be,” he said. “I
think those are connections we don’t make, or we’re not encouraged to make. And
those are really humanizing connections.”
Travel, Relocation Abroad
Many of us
fantasize about moving abroad, but cost can be a major barrier to
actually relocating.
Enter these 11 incredible
destinations that make living your international dreams easier on the wallet.
They’re among the last-place finishers in the annual “Cost of Living” rankings from global
consulting firm Mercer. And in this case, finishing last is a good thing, as it means
a city is considered an affordable place to live and work.
Mercer surveyed more than 375
cities, 209 of which are included in the final rankings, on
their relative costs for more than 200 goods and services, including housing, transportation, food and entertainment,
spokeswoman Miriam Siscovick told HuffPost. New York City is used as a base,
and the ranking compares all currencies against the U.S. dollar. The ranking is
intended mostly for business managers assessing the cost of sending their
employees on projects abroad, but turns out it also makes a great personal guidebook if
you’re looking for an affordable new city to call home.
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