Official charter of the yellow vests
The Media
Interview with Sissi Chao, passionate and inspirational entrepreneur, founder of REmakeHub
Sissi Chao has master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science, St Andrews University and Duke University. She has worked in a consulting firm Accenture as well as in the tourism industry at Mouzenidis Group in Greece. She decided that her life mission is to clean up the waste, turn them into renewable resources and recover the planet ecosystem. Her projects “Made for Saving Our Ocean” & “Fashion from Waste” is now on view as part of the socially responsible startup called “REmakeHub”.
Open-Source Project Spins Up 3D-Printed Ventilator Validation Prototype In Just One Week
In a great example of what can happen when smart, technically-oriented people come together in a time of need, an open-source hardware project started by a group including Irish entrepreneur Colin Keogh and Breeze Automation CEO Gui Calavanti has produced a prototype ventilator using 3D-printed parts and readily available, inexpensive material. The ventilator prototype was designed and produced in just seven days, after the project spun up on Facebook and attracted participation from over 300 engineers, medical professionals and researchers.
Operation Paperclip - Presentation by Annie Jacobsen
Mentions Otto Ambros, a German chemist known for inventing rubber, and high level Nazi who after WW2 became a highly regarded Scientists in the USA. He was head of Grünenthal's supervisory board and an adviser to Dow Chemical and Army Chemical Corps.
Three headed dragon painting from an Etruscan tomb at the necropolis of Pianacce (4th c BC)
A Short Dhamma Talk on Corona from an 80 year old monk
Old Student: How can Vipassana help in an uncertain and fearful time like this Covid-19 viral pandemic and attendant hysteria?
Response: A virus is contagious. Likewise fear is contagious as well. We may become carriers of the virus, we don’t have to be carriers of fear.
Arresting our own inner fears so that we do not become carriers of it is a significant contribution Vipassana yogis can make to all those around us at this time.
Media inundates us with fear-mongering. At every turn, obsessive fear of impending doom from without and within clouds us, impedes right understanding and leads to wrong decisions and even to paralysis where we don’t know what to do to protect ourselves. This triggers our own inner fears and insecurities.
In the course of Vipassana practice, we have the chance to arrest, attenuate and ultimately eradicate fear. But this is only possible via our practice of Vipassana: when fear arises we remain in sampajjañña. In other words, while meditating when worry, fear or dread arises in the mind in the form of thoughts and emotions it is critical that we remain aware of the accompanying sensations recognizing their inescapable evidence of impermanence. The more we become adept at doing this the more we undo the tendency of mind to dwell and react upon counter-productive ideation that produces nothing but suffering and unhappiness.
Epidemics, pandemics shouldn’t distract us from these fundamentals. As human beings, throughout our lives we will cycle incessantly between good and bad health, wellness and sickness, until we die. Ignorant wild swings of behavior accompany the extremes of each: in youthful exuberance, we blithely feel carefree and take risks thinking ourselves somehow immortal. As adults in the throes of illness, we over-react with despair thinking our suffering is somehow unique and interminable. “Yikes, it must be cancerous. Yikes, surely I’ve got the Covid-19 virus !” The hallmark of each of these extremes is the absence of the awareness of the truth of impermanence. Dhamma practice is the only remedy to correct and undo the effects of this deep-seated ignorance.We are going to become ill at some point and we will recover until we don’t. Reasonable precautions to safeguard health by definition are those undertaken with a balanced mind. We obtain a balanced mind increasingly when we purify it with the practice of Vipassana/sampajjañña.
With Mettā.
Saddy Waddy - The Private Sector
Snoop Dogg Says 'I'm Good', Holds Breath For 10 Seconds With No Coughing Amid Coronavirus Concern (msn)
The rapper put out his "P. S. A." on Instagram and held his breath for 10 seconds to prove that he is healthy. Unfortunately, holding one's breath is NOT A TEST for the Coronavirus but his message for everyone to "stay safe" came across. The artist then proceeded to hold his breath. "No coughing," Snoop triumphantly declared after his exhale. I mean... we already knew he had strong lungs because he smokes like a chimney.
World’s Richest Spend $1 Billion on ‘Bargains of a Lifetime’ (Bloomberg)
Some of the world’s wealthiest people spent more than $1 billion combined to boost their stakes in companies as markets around the world tumbled. Activist investor Carl Icahn increased his holdings in Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and Newell Brands Inc., according to regulatory filings. Warren Buffett’s holding company added shares of Delta Air Lines Inc., while the heirs of the Tetra Laval fortune plowed $317 million into International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. stock.
China locked in hybrid war with US - by Pepe Escobar (asiatimes)
Fallout from Covid-19 outbreak puts Beijing and Washington on a collision course. Additionally, along the hard slog down the road, with immense, inbuilt human and economic sacrifice, with or without a reboot of the world-system, a more pressing question remains: will imperial elites still choose to keep waging full-spectrum-dominance hybrid war against China?
US keeps public in dark over COVID-19 - by Yang Sheng and Cao Siqi (Global Time)
"US irresponsible, opaque, selfish, disorganized: analysts" - "Low transparency" - "Anarchy in the US" - "The world should be worried about the situation in the US."
Bolsonaro’s son enrages Beijing by blaming China for coronavirus crisis (theguardian)
“It’s China’s fault,” Bolsonaro claimed on Twitter, retweeting a message that said: “The blame for the global coronavirus pandemic has a name and surname: the Chinese Communist party.” Yang Wanming, Beijing’s top diplomat in Brazil, demanded an immediate retraction and apology for the “evil insult”, while his embassy accused Eduardo Bolsonaro of contracting “a mental virus” during a recent trip to the United States.
Which Tech Bro Is Fleeing Coronavirus On This ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Plane? (hufpo, 2020)
"If the pandemic does come, [Sam] Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand." - NewYorker, 2016
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand (Guardian, 2018)
How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific
Bill Gates Calls For National Tracking System For Coronavirus During Reddit AMA (forbes)
Question: "What changes are we going to have to make to how businesses operate to maintain our economy while providing social distancing?" Answer: "The question of which businesses should keep going is tricky. Certainly food supply and the health system. We still need water, electricity and the internet. Supply chains for critical things need to be maintained. Countries are still figuring out what to keep running. Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it." From Bill Gates' Reddit AMA
Saturniidae Moth Caterpillar
A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths (Smithsonian)
A jaw-dropping example of Ice Age architecture has been unearthed on Russia’s forest steppe: a huge, circular structure built with the bones of at least 60 woolly mammoths. But exactly why hunter-gatherers enduring the frigid realities of life 25,000 years ago would construct the 40-foot diameter building is a fascinating question. [...] “This project is giving us a real insight into how our human ancestors adapted to climate change, to the harshest parts of the last glacial cycle, and adapted to use the materials that they had around them,” Pryor said. “It’s really a story of survival in the face of adversity.”
Economic Perspective (1980 - 2020)
Meditation may have shaved 8 years of aging off Buddhist monk's brain (Livescience)
Analysis of the brain of a Tibetian Buddhist monk showing that his 41-year-old brain actually resembles that of a 33-year-old. The monk, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (YMR), a renowned meditation practitioner and teacher, began meditating at age 9. The findings add to a growing pile of evidence "that meditative practice may be associated with slowed biological aging," the researchers wrote in the case study, published online Feb. 26 in the journal Neurocase.
Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds (BBC)
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims. The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live. The gulf is greatest in transport, where the top tenth gobble 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth, the research says. That’s because people on the lowest incomes can rarely afford to drive. The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use. And it was replicated across all countries. And they warn that, unless there's a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050. That's even if energy efficiency improves.
Coronavirus: nitrogen dioxide emissions drop over Italy (ESA)
New data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite reveal the decline of air pollution, specifically nitrogen dioxide emissions, over Italy. This reduction is particularly visible in northern Italy which coincides with its nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.