Sarah Riddick

[npr]

Young People Lead Millions To Protest Global Inaction On Climate Change

"We know it's happening. We need change. We demand better," an 11-year-old girl said at a march in Thailand. Protesters are calling for net-zero carbon emissions and other changes.

[allthingslinguistic]

The #BenderRule: On Naming the Languages We Study and Why It Matters

Progress in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) depends on the existence of language resources:

Emily Bender on the coining of the Bender Rule and why it’s important to name the languages we make technology for. Excerpt: 

Though English and Mandarin Chinese are widely spoken, both as first and second languages, clearly a world in which advanced language technology exists only for these two languages is undesirable. The promise of language technology includes pro-social applications spanning a wide range from biomedical applications (e.g. matching patients to research studies or automatically flagging patients for time-sensitive tests based on physician notes), through machine translation of documents available on the web, to interactive tutors for language learning and other learning scenarios and more. These benefits should be available to all. 

Furthermore, the existence of even the most basic language technology (keyboards or input systems supporting the writing system, spell checkers, web search) builds up the value of a language which can be an important factor in self-esteem and educational outcomes for speakers of minoritized languages and can contribute to the maintenance of languages under threat of displacement by local majority languages (see e.g. Bamgbose 2011).

And yet, the field of NLP is caught in a negative feedback loop that hinders the expansion of the languages we work on. Work on languages other than English is often considered “language specific” and thus reviewed as less important than equivalent work on English. Reviewers for NLP conferences often mistake the state of the art on a given task as the state of the art for English on that task, and if a paper doesn’t compare to that then they can’t tell whether it’s “worthy”.

I believe that a key underlying factor here is the misconception that English is a sufficiently representative language and that therefore work on (just) English isn’t also language-specific. This misconception is abetted by the habit of failing to name the language studied when it is English.

Read the whole thing.

[sarahriddick]

Lizzo

FAT DOES NOT = UGLY. When someone calls themselves fat, please do not respond with “no you’re not, you’re pretty” as if being fat and beautiful are mutually exclusive. I’m here to shake the table, to...

[reddit-news]

Perth’s first ocean rubbish bin is sucking plenty of plastic out of the sea - A unique floating rubbish bin, which effectively acts as a vacuum cleaner for the ocean, is being put to good use in waters off Western Australia for the first time. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-17/perth-seabin-invention-sucking-cigarettes-and-plastic-from-ocean/10800792

[quotespile]

Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear.

Paul Beatty, The Sellout (via quotespile)

[sarahriddick]

Clean energy employs more people than fossil fuels in nearly every U.S. state

Trump’s upcoming executive order meant to boost fossil fuel jobs may end up harming an even bigger job creator — renewable energy.

“Nationally, clean energy jobs outnumber fossil fuel jobs by more than 2.5 to 1, according to a new Sierra Club analysis of Department of Energy jobs data. And when it comes to coal and gas — two sectors President Donald Trump has promised to bolster through his upcoming executive order on energy regulation — clean energy jobs outnumber jobs dealing with those two fossil fuels by 5 to 1.”

Why are we restricting a necessary and viable industry’s growth?

[sarahriddick]

Watch how the Syrian civil war became the mess it is today

Watch how the Syrian civil war became the mess it is today

[reddit-news]

Climate change is altering global air currents – increasing droughts, heatwaves and floods - Massive loops in the Arctic jetstream that have a major impact on our weather show a 'clear fingerprint of human activity

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-global-air-currents-drought-heatwaves-floods-global-warming-michael-mann-arctic-a7651581.html

[sarahriddick]

Can We Slow Global Warming and Still Grow?

America led the world in reducing carbon pollution in 2016, with a decline of three per cent. But the Trump Administration's plans suggest that current trends are about to shift.

“Something new is happening. The global economy has now grown nearly ten per cent without any increase in the annual CO2 emissions that are the principal human contribution to climate change. In the parlance of sustainability, growth and emissions appear to have “decoupled.”Nearly as remarkable was the star of the latest announcement: the United States. Long decried as a climate-action laggard, America led the world in reducing carbon pollution in 2016, with a decline of three per cent.

[. . .]

If the I.E.A.’s announcement didn’t quite become a eureka moment, it’s in part because the Trump Administration’s plans suggest that current trends are about to shift. On Friday, the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada received a Presidential permit, while a proposed budget released by the White House earlier this month would end spending on federal climate-change research and prevention programs. As Amy Davidson and others have described, the Trump Administration is hostile toward efforts to combat climate change, and it has promised that energy and climate policies will focus on reviving the coal industry, reducing carbon-emission standards for vehicles and power plants, and revisiting requirements that climate change be considered, and its costs accounted for, in decisions by federal agencies. Critics have pointed out that at least some of these efforts are unlikely to succeed (the I.E.A. emphasized that America’s 2016 emissions drop was driven by markets and new technologies as much as by policy), but any one of them would increase carbon emissions. 

A historic advance against climate change is threatened with reversal.”

[sarahriddick]

What Non-Black Latinxs Can Learn From this Debate Between Salma Hayek and Jessica Williams

A recent tense debate between Salma Hayek & Jessica Williams provides an intersectionality 101.

A fascinating and enlightening exchange that features intersectional and intergenerational debate

[sarahriddick]

Surveying the Lives of Americans, Through the Windows of Their Parked Cars - The New Yorker

The most thrilling part of Phil Jung’s series “Windscreen” is its voyeur’s impulse to learn about people through a record they never intended to share.

[sarahriddick]

Resources for supporting Black Lives Matter

Social media support for #blacklivesmatter is a great thing. Here are some resources to help you go beyond it.

Things to KNOW: 1. The Police Union Contract Project: “We reviewed the police union contracts of 81 of America’s 100 largest cities* and police bill of rights in all 14 states with such legislation to identify the ways in which these policies make it more difficult to hold police accountable."

2. An interactive infographic about the number of deaths from encounters with law enforcement this year.

3. The Black Lives Matter Movement's beautiful "Guiding Principles" page. Please give it a read.

Things to DO:

4. Sign this MoveOn.org petition that calls for justice for Alton Sterling.

5. Sign this Change.org petition that calls for justice for Philando Castile.

6. Sign this WhiteHouse.gov petition that calls for a federal response to police brutality. If the petition gets 100,000 signatures within 30 days, the White House has to respond.

7. Write to your local representative. 

8. Write to your Senator.

9. Donate to Black Lives Matter. 

[sarahriddick]

Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are 2 of 728 Americans that police killed this year

Fatal Encounters is an online database that tracks people killed during interactions with law enforcement. And in 2016, Fatal Encounters has recorded a police-involved killing for every day except one — June 17. View the calendar of people killed by police.

Click here for an interactive infographic that breaks down how many people died on each day this year from an encounter with law enforcement.

[sarahriddick]

The Police Union Contract Project investigates how police union contracts block accountability.

“We reviewed the police union contracts of 81 of America's 100 largest cities* and police bill of rights in all 14 states with such legislation to identify the ways in which these policies make it more difficult to hold police accountable. 

72 of 81 cities' contracts and 13 of the 14 states with police bills of rights were found to impose at least one barrier to police accountability.”

Example: “41 cities and 9 states give officers under investigation access to information that civilians suspects don't get, including 16 cities that allow officers to review all evidence against them prior to being interrogated.”

[sarahriddick]

[sarahriddick]

Female police officers subjected to 'attractiveness' inspections in Mexico

‘I trained to be a police officer, not a showgirl’ – two officers in Querétaro complain to the state’s human rights commission

[philosophybits]

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but few think of changing themselves.

Leo Tolstoy (via philosophybits)