September 10: Internet Slowdown

Urgent action alert: September 10th is the Internet Slowdown, a creative online action to defend net neutrality. This is our moment to get everyone to understand what’s at stake.

Got a website, blog, app, or Tumblr? Click here to get the code to participate.

Everyone else, we need you to help make this huge! Click here and share this image on social media. Then forward this to everyone you can think of.

Now read on -- this email is important. <3 span="">

-Evan at FFTF

Dear Fight for the Future member,

If you woke up tomorrow, and your internet looked like this, what would you do?

Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved “Fast Lane” sites.

Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream Cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?

How would your worldview be different? Do you think you’d have found Fight for the Future or other causes you care about? Would you be getting this email?

On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC’s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an “Internet Slowdown” to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality.

We need everyone on board for this. Got a website or blog? Find out how the slowdown works and how you can join here: https://battleforthenet.com/sept10th

If you don’t have a website, you are still part of this! Here’s a quick list of things you can do to help in the Battle for the Net.

This isn’t about how quickly our cat videos load, it’s about the future of our ability to communicate, to learn, to create, and to rebel. It’s about the future of humanity.

The SOPA blackout proved that even concentrated monopoly and government power is no match for the power of people’s voices connected and amplified by the free and open web.

That power is one of the few things we have in this fight for the future. This could be one of our last chances to defend it. If we lose it, we lose a lot more than just the Internet. If we win, we win a lot more than just streaming video. The stakes are high and we should be acting like it.

The Internet is counting on each and every one of us to act. Let’s not let ourselves down. See you on the net September 10th!

For the future,

-Evan, Tiffiniy, Holmes, and the FFTF team

P.S. We need to make the movement for net neutrality feel like it’s EVERYWHERE. Want to proudly display your love for the free and open web at all times? Get your very own Team Internet t-shirt: http://teespring.com/stores/team-internet and tweet a photo of yourself wearing it to #TeamInternet!

Fukushima'd Monday

The horror of Fukushima keeps on giving.

Immigrant children who were sent back are being killed.

How lizards regenerate their tails: researchers discover genetic 'recipe':

By understanding the secret of how lizards regenerate their tails, researchers may be able to develop ways to stimulate the regeneration of limbs in humans. Now, a team of researchers from Arizona State University is one step closer to solving that mystery. The scientists have discovered the genetic “recipe” for lizard tail regeneration, which may come down to using genetic ingredients in just the right mixture and amounts 

Lizards?... might want to be careful...

George Bush.

Bank of America gets to pay back 17bn over questionable mortgages.  Do they get to go back and help those people they drove out of their houses and into poverty, too?

Bigger spiders a good thing?  I don't think so....

A cop discusses Ferguson and the behavior of the police.

Oh please, let this be true! The Twilight of Antonin Scalia

One half-hour to change a governor's mind about climate change.  And they don't think it worked.

How much you can save when you stop buying shit.

How amazingly transparent the CIA is....

How do you pronounce pecan?

California drought, before and after comparisons.

Iceland could really mess things up...

Because of Bárðarbunga.  Daily Kos's Rei tells the story:

The winter of 1783-1784. The Revolutionary War had just ended, and Benjamin Franklin was puzzling over the nation's bizarre weather. Congress had been delayed getting to Annapolis to vote for the Treaty of Paris because the Chesapeake Bay just wouldn't melt. The Mississippi River froze down to New Orleans, and ice was reported floating in the Gulf of Mexico. Reports from Europe were of a bizarrely hot summer with thick fog that was choking people to death in Scotland, massive hailstones, lightning, and crop failures. The sun was blood-red at noon. Mass starvation that would ultimately kill 1/6ths of Egypt's population took hold due to a historic drought of the Nile. As many as six million people would die from the bizarre weather.

Franklin was one of the few scientists of the era to (almost) correctly speculate as to its cause:

"The cause of this universal fog is not yet ascertained [...] or whether it was the vast quantity of smoke, long continuing, to issue during the summer from Hekla in Iceland, and that other volcano which arose out of the sea near that island, which smoke might be spread by various winds, over the northern part of the world, is yet uncertain."

He, however, had mixed up his Icelandic volcanoes, for it was not Hekla that erupted that year, causing the planet-altering weather, but Laki (Eldgjá). A rift 23 kilometers long opened up in places up to 100 meters wide with lava fountains at times reaching over a kilometers into the air - and it continued erupting for 8 months.

The total quantity of lava erupted - 14 cubic kilometers - was not that much more than Mount Pinatubo (largest eruption of the 20th century)'s 10 cubic kilometers. But the eruption kicked out a staggering 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide, compared to Pinatubo's 17 million - nearly supervolcano levels. Also unusually, Laki emitted 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride - normally a trace volcanic gas. These gasses created the "Laki Haze" across Europe. In Iceland, the consequences were most severe - a quarter of the population starved or died of fluoride poisoning, and most of the livestock died. Denmark considered evacuating the entire island.

Is Laki threatening to go off? No. Then why do I mention him?

Because his big sister IS threatening to go off.

Bárðarbunga (BOWR-thar-Boon-kah, "Bárður's Bulge") is part of the same volcanic system, but is much larger than Laki. Barðárbunga stretches out over 200 kilometers long. It has a large eruption every 250-600 years. One of its eruptions before settlers arrived was 21-30 cubic kilometers of lava. Like her little brother Laki, she's associated with massive amounts of toxic gas release.

Update:
Rei's update.

Depression is not melancholy nor sadness

Depression

edit.. would be nice if I put in the link.

Friday Follies

Russian has actually had two nuclear disasters.

Love no matter what.

Apparently we need to start recording everything we do.

Republicans hate government so much that they are startled to learn they might want to show voters they can govern.

Paul Krugman takes apart libertarian economics and Ayn Rand fantasies.

The over-militarization of our police. Steve Bates discusses. Officer Friendly.

Singing opera may save your life.

Why funny people kill themselves.

Jeffrey Smith Challenge to Neil deGrasse Tyson on GMO food.

Piles and piles of bones, artifacts, fish

Piles of prehistoric bones!

Piles of 'artifacts spanning more than 15 centuries of Etruscan, Roman and medieval civilization in Tuscany'.

Piles of dead sea creatures.  Stop ghost fishing.

Shocking Statistics
Up to 30% of all fish are caught in ghost nets.
Roughly 10%, or 640,000 tons of all marine debris are caught in ghost nets.
As of right now, and still counting, there has been thousands of seabirds, 20,000 northern fur seals, and 500,000 octopi caught in ghost nets.
Over a 23 week period, there has been 11 harbor seals, 450 salmon, 1,300 spiny dogfish, 1,800 birds, and 16,900 crabs caught in just one net.
In the wreck of the MV Infidel off the coast of Santa Catalina Island alone, 4.5 tons of netting sank to the ocean floor.

The Power of Recycling and of Words

One woman changed the way we throw out our trash.

First amendment.

This is what the matter is with Kansas.

What Happened When an Extremist, Christian Fundamentalist Got to Run a Whole State