newiceberg

Two-tier policing

Every day for the last two weeks, Johannes-Harm Hovinga has sat at a raised table in Museum Arnhem, using a two-hole page puncher to systematically perforate the 7,705-page sixth assessment report produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

He has printed it out on coloured paper and the result is a vibrant heap piling up at the artist’s feet.

Hovinga remains completely silent during each performance in the Netherlands-based museum. He drinks water, but doesn’t eat, with bathroom breaks his only intermission.

“We are at a crucial turning point in history,” says Hovinga, “where the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly evident. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and microplastics are just some examples of what our planet faces.”

The artist calls his living piece The Elephant in the Room. It is an artistic protest, meant to illustrate the lack of urgency by policymakers and global leaders. Hovinga believes in the power of creative expression to help raise awareness and persuade people to take a stand.

The scale of efforts by oil companies and public bodies to protect their premises from environmental protesters can be revealed in new BBC analysis.

More than 400 demonstrators are named in court orders that restrict protests at more than 1,200 locations, the data gathered by File on 4 shows.

The civil injunctions - in force at places like oil terminals, petrol stations and racetracks across England and Wales - also apply to “persons unknown”, meaning anyone could be prosecuted.

The enforcement of civil injunctions has been reported before, but our analysis is the first time the extent of their use has been calculated.

To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called NFC, but what's happening internally? How does the ticket work without a battery? How does it communicate with the turnstile? And how can it be so cheap that you can throw the ticket away after one use? To answer these questions, I opened up a ticket and examined the tiny chip inside.

After fleeing Hitler, brilliant Jewish economist Karl Polanyi was never welcomed by the British. Now, for the first time in 80 years, his masterwork The Great Transformation has been be published in the UK

Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.

Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.

Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.

Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company.

Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell's plan to restore its in-office culture.

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Temperatures are rising as summer kicks off, and psychological scientists are sounding the alarm on what to be aware of in warmer temperatures. It remains to be seen whether summer 2024 breaks the records of last summer: In the United States, heat domes baked the Midwest; El Paso, Texas, saw weeks without a day below 100°F; and Tampa Bay, Florida, issued its first extreme heat advisory. In November 2023, Phoenix reported that at least 569 people had died because of heat-related reasons over the summer.

Extreme heat days are an inevitable consequence of a warming world, and things are not cooling down. Globally, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and the Met Office—the United Kingdom’s national weather service—predicts that 2024 may be worse. It could even be the first year on record to surpass 1.5°C of warming above the preindustrial era.