“After two minutes of training, I was talking to people desperate for help.” More …
6 Rules for Rebuilding Infrastructure in an Era of ‘Unprecedented’ Weather Events
“With more very powerful storms forming in the Atlantic this hurricane season, we should know better. We must listen to those telling a more complicated story, one that involves decades of land use planning and poor urban design that has generated impervious surfaces at a fantastic pace.As the Houston region turns its attention to rebuilding and other cities consider ramping up efforts to make their infrastructure more resilient, it is this story that can provide valuable lessons for policymakers, planners, engineers, developers and the public. These lessons are all the more important against the backdrop of a Trump administration that has stripped requirements for infrastructure projects to consider impacts and may try to offer an infrastructure investment package.” More …
Jeff Bezos: “Bring me the next ‘Game of Thrones’ for Amazon”
“The mandate from Jeff Bezos is clear: Bring me “Game of Thrones.” That’s the word that has the creative community buzzing this week about a major strategy shift underway for Amazon Studios’ original series efforts.” More …
Why RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News
“It’s faster, more efficient, and you won’t have to worry as much about accidentally leaking your news reading habit to all your Facebook friends. One of the main reasons RSS is so beloved of news gatherers is that it catches everything a site publishes—not just the articles that have proved popular with other users, not just the articles from today, not just the articles that happened to be tweeted out while you were actually staring at Twitter. Everything.” More …
How Facebook Changed the Spy Game
“Any doubt that Russia has been running a strategically targeted disinformation campaign in the United States was erased on Wednesday, when Facebook revealed that it had deleted 470 ‘inauthentic’ accounts that were based in Russia and had paid $100,000 to promote divisive ads during the 2016 presidential election.” More …
Texas Chemical Plant Sued For Millions, First Responders Charge Gross Negligence
“Seven first responders filed a lawsuit Thursday against a chemical company whose Houston-area facility exploded after Hurricane Harvey. The lawsuit against Arkema and three of the company’s executives is seeking over $1 million in monetary relief, and alleges that the company did not adequately warn law enforcement and public health agencies about hazardous materials at the chemical plant. Those allegations come after Arkema and its lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, lobbied to kill a federal rule designed to require companies to better coordinate and inform first responders about the toxic compounds at chemical plants. The rule would have taken effect in March.” More …
Here’s Why Florida Is so Much More Vulnerable to a Hurricane Like Irma Right Now
“Florida’s vulnerability to a catastrophic storm has been obvious for years. Poor development planning, storm amnesia, a faulty insurance system, and a strong dose of climate-change denial have made coastal Florida, especially Miami and Tampa, much more vulnerable to Irma. In a 2013 World Bank and OECD analysis of 136 cities with the most property at risk to wind and storm surge, both Tampa and Miami were in the top ten, and sea level rise from climate change was not even included as a risk factor.” More …
Repressing the Ballot in New Hampshire
“If states are the laboratories of democracy, New Hampshire is serving
as a testing ground for the party’s Trump-era strategy on voting.A new Republican-backed New Hampshire state law known as SB 3 tightens the rules for people who register and vote on the same day—about 11 percent of all New Hampshire voters last November. These would-be voters can be hit with a $5,000 fine if they vote and can’t show documentary proof of where they live.” More …
Florida Risks More Irma Devastation Because Gov. Rick Scott Lifted Wetland Protections
“The Republican governor prioritized development over ecological restoration of wetlands. Scott cut funding for the state’s water management districts in 2011, leading to staff reductions and less funding for ecosystem restoration projects. Around the same time, Scott signed the state legislature’s repeal of the state’s 1985 growth management law, leading to a spike in development. Scott would tell the Palm Beach Post in 2016 that the economic benefits from more building meant Florida was ‘on a roll.'” More …
Kris Kobach’s Leap of Logic on Voter Fraud in New Hampshire Should Be Disqualifying
“Trump’s commission seems clearly designed to present fraud as a significant threat to the electoral system, a claim that’s belied by any number of studies, including one looking specifically at New Hampshire, and the lack of nearly any actual uncovered examples of it. More …