WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.
LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/climate/biodiversity-extinction-united-nations.html
In 2001, a smugglers’ yacht washed up in the Azores and disgorged its contents. The island of São Miguel was quickly flooded with high-grade cocaine – and nearly 20 years on, it is still feeling the effects.
A Michigan mom allegedly shot dead by her 9-year-old adopted son feared she was raising “the next serial killer,” her family said.
A new film about criminal and cult leader Charles Manson has just been released and the early reports seem to be that people are more excited than they were for Zac Efron’s performance as serial killer Ted Bundy.
Anna Sorokin, who pretended to be a German heiress, bilked Manhattan hotels, banks and a private jet operator.
Anna Sorokin, the fake German heiress who swindled her way into Manhattan’s elite party circles, was sentenced on Thursday to four to 12 years in prison for bilking hotels, banks and a private jet operator out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The sentencing capped a case of a young grifter who spun her tale with brazen flair. Ms. Sorokin wore designer clothes, lived in boutique hotels, dined in expensive restaurants and lured investors for a $40 million private club — all without a penny to her name.
LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/nyregion/anna-delvey-sorokin-sentenced.html
Gilberto Valle might not be a bloodthirsty cannibal — but he hopes to cook up some cash thinking like one.
The former NYPD cop, who spent almost two years in prison on charges that he was plotting to kidnap, slaughter and eat young women, has penned an “extremely violent” horror novel that he hopes will rake in some green. The conviction was later thrown out after a federal judge decided it was all fantasy.
“Even though I’ve been completely exonerated, all this stuff about ‘Cannibal Cop’ is still there,” Valle, 33, told the Daily News on Monday. “Writing the book comes down to me trying to find a way to make a living.”
Robert Crumb is the undisputed godfather of alternative comics. His work has appeared in museums across the world, from the Venice Biennale to New York’s Museum of Modern Art; he was the subject of Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed documentary Crumb(Gene Siskel’s favorite film of 1994); his drawings are so coveted by collectors that a sale of some sketchbooks in the early 1990s bought him a centuries-old chateau in southeast France. The legendary art critic Robert Hughes has favorably compared his portrayals of the human grotesque to Pieter Bruegel and William Hogarth, declaring Crumb “the one and only genius the 1960s underground produced in visual art, either in America or Europe.”
LINK: https://reason.com/2019/04/29/cancel-culture-comes-for-count/
People are too complacent about the asteroid threat for Bill Nye’s liking.
The former TV “Science Guy,” who currently serves as CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, warned that catastrophic impacts like the one that offed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago are not confined to the past.
“The Earth is going to get hit with another [big] asteroid,” Nye said yesterday (May 2) at the International Academy of Astronautics’2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland.
LINK: https://www.space.com/killer-asteroids-warning-bill-nye.html
Part of what makes Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War so scary is that his “evil” plan makes a certain amount of rational sense: The greatest enemy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t Thanos; it’s overpopulation that will eventually lead to famine and ruin. By writing his own narrative, Thanos becomes the hero if he succeeds in wiping out half of the universe’s population from existence. Thanos isn’t a generic villain like Ultron or Steppenwolf who simply wants to destroy everything. He’s much more calculated, even logical in his approach, and more than 20,000 people in the real world agree with him enough to subscribe to a subreddit called /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. Even in moral philosophy, they’re probably not alone.
LINK: https://www.inverse.com/article/44383-avengers-infinity-war-thanos-ethics-philosophy
