February 2024 - Page 6 of 13

Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It?

Feb

Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It?

Picture this: You own a few hundred acres near a growing town that your family has been farming for generations. Turning a profit has gotten harder, and none of your children want to take it over. You don’t want to sell the land; you love the open space, the flora and fauna it hosts. But offers from developers who would turn it into subdivisions or strip malls seem increasingly tempting.One day, a land broker mentions an idea. How about granting a long-term lease to a company that values your property for the same reasons you do: long walks through tall…

Residents Oppose Expanding Drug Use Sites to Suburban Vancouver

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

Residents Oppose Expanding Drug Use Sites to Suburban Vancouver

British Columbia’s rampant drug deaths have more than once thrust public health officials into uncharted territory. It became the first province to decriminalize small quantities of hard drugs for personal use in 2022, about two decades after Vancouver opened the first supervised injection site in North America. But as overdoses increase in some British Columbia towns, there is disagreement in one city about how to address it.In Richmond, one of British Columbia’s largest cities, with 230,000 people, municipal council chambers turned raucous this week as a full public gallery of residents opposed a plan for staff to study whether a…

75 Hard Has a Cultish Following. Is It Worth All the Effort?

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

75 Hard Has a Cultish Following. Is It Worth All the Effort?

Two 45-minute daily workouts. One gallon of water. 10 pages of a nonfiction book. A diet. No “cheat meals” or alcohol. For 75 days.And if you mess up, you have to start from the beginning.Sound like a lot? It’s supposed to be. The program, called 75 Hard, is meant to build mental toughness. Some say that rigidity is what makes it great, and others say that makes it problematic.Since it was created in 2019, 75 Hard has developed somewhat of a cult following, with practitioners posting daily progress pictures and videos that sometimes rack up millions of views on TikTok…

Kylian Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

Kylian Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over

Follow live coverage of Manchester City vs Chelsea in the Premier League todayIce ages haven’t lasted as long as this.Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid… it has been a thing for about a decade at least.The Athletic was not even in existence when the pair began courting each other. Twitter was still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift hadn’t heard of American football and the closest thing we got to a global pandemic was from watching Contagion.It has been an inexorably long saga, the very worst kind of transfer saga in fact, with endless posturing, incessant lies and spin and thousands…

The Antitrust Enforcers Aimed at Big Tech. Then Came the Backlash.

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Science and Technology

The Antitrust Enforcers Aimed at Big Tech. Then Came the Backlash.

The South Korean government unleashed a wave of panic across the internet industry: The country’s antitrust regulator said it would enact the toughest competition law outside Europe, curbing the influence of major technology companies.The Korea Fair Trade Commission, with the backing of President Yoon Suk Yeol, said in December that it planned to make a proposal modeled after the 2022 Digital Markets Act, the European Union’s landmark law to rein in American tech giants. This bill also seemed to target South Korea’s own internet conglomerates just as much as the Alphabets, Apples and Metas of the world.The commission said the…

Biden Faces More Pressure From Environmentalists to Block Steel Merger

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Investments and Business

Biden Faces More Pressure From Environmentalists to Block Steel Merger

In interviews, environmental activists working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions say the merger would bring together two steel giants that are laggards on transitioning away from fossil fuels.Researchers at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit pushing to decarbonize steel and other heavy industries, drew on both companies’ public disclosures to calculate that Nippon and U.S. Steel are relatively high emitters of heat-trapping gases from steel production. Both companies rely heavily on coal-powered blast furnaces and are on a slower path to transition to cleaner fuels than some international competitors. Three U.S. Steel facilities — in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois — combine to…

In Melbourne, an Enchanting Hyperlocal Paper for the Digital Age

Feb

By Kyle C. Garrison

Politics

In Melbourne, an Enchanting Hyperlocal Paper for the Digital Age

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter based in Melbourne.In August 1972, a collective of writers, mostly in Melbourne, released the first issue of a biweekly broadsheet that would chronicle a certain corner of Australian countercultural life — starting with a scathing piece on the “young press baron” Rupert Murdoch.Over a run of about 40 months, The Digger newspaper featured fervent opinion columns, extended reviews and cultural listings, as well as what it described as “gonzo accounts” of Australian life. It touched on topics including sex…