Author Archives: Andrea

Smile, you’re on camera!

NPR: The Camera That Went To The Moon And Changed How We See It.

“In the summer of 1962, Walter Schirra — who would soon become America’s third man to orbit the Earth — walked into a Houston photo supply shop looking for a camera he could take into space.

He came out with a Hasselblad 500C, a high-end Swedish import that had been recommended to him by photographers from Life and National Geographic.

“He was sort of an amateur photographer,” Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in charge of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s astronaut cameras, says of Schirra. “Somewhere along the line, the decision was made that he could select what camera was flown on his flight.””

“Geistige Brandstifter”

Deutsche Welle: Wie gefährlich ist die Identitäre Bewegung? “Der Verfassungsschutz ist zum Schluss gekommen: Die Identitäre Bewegung ist rechtsextrem. Was wollen die Aktivisten, die sich gern als modern und moderat verkaufen, wirklich?”

“Aus dem Ethnopluralismus erwächst die Forderung nach “Remigration”: Migranten und Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund sollen in ihre “Herkunftsländer” zurückgeschickt werden. Speit meint: “Hier sind sie wirklich knallhart. Sie sagen eindeutig: wer nicht deutscher Abstammung ist, hat in Deutschland nichts zu suchen.” Wer zwar einen deutschen Pass hat, aber Wurzeln in der Türkei, der muss also zurück in die Heimat der Vorfahren? “Nicht zwangsläufig”, sagt IB-Chef Fiß im Gespräch mit der DW. Wieder bemüht er sich, zu betonen, dass seine Bewegung nichts gegen Menschen mit ausländischen Wurzeln habe.

Diese Uneindeutigkeit sei eine “diskursive Taktik der IB”, sagt der Journalist Speit. “Sie wissen, was sie wann und wo sagen oder nicht sagen sollten, um moderat zu erscheinen.” Ansonsten könne man leicht erkennen, welch radikale Positionen sie in Wirklichkeit vertreten würden. “Sie halten sich zum Beispiel massiv zurück bei der Frage, wie Remigration organisiert werden soll. Sollen da wieder Züge fahren?””

“[I]f people want less plastic, they’ll have to pick replacements carefully”

NPR: Plastic Has A Big Carbon Footprint — But That Isn’t The Whole Story.

“Plastic waste gets a lot of attention when photos of dead whales with stomachs full of plastic bags hit the news. Pieces of plastic also litter cities, and tiny plastic particles are even floating in the air.

Largely overlooked is how making plastic in the first place affects the environment, especially global warming. Plastic actually has a big carbon footprint, but so do many of the alternatives to plastic. And that’s what makes replacing plastic a problem without a clear solution.”

“Though 72 hours is the longest a minor can be legally confined in such a facility, some had been there almost a month”

The Atlantic: What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse. “Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas. She found evidence of infection, malnutrition, and psychological trauma.”

“But when Sevier asked the 38 children she examined that day about sanitation, they all said they weren’t allowed to wash their hands or brush their teeth. This was “tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease,“ she later wrote in a medical declaration about the visit, the document that the lawyers filed in federal court and also shared with me. (Asked for comment on this story, a Customs and Border Protection official wrote in an email that the agency aims to “provide the best care possible to those in our custody, especially children.“ The agency’s “short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations,“ the official added, “and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.“ )

As agents brought in the children she requested, Sevier said, the smell of sweat and soiled clothing filled the room. They had not been allowed to bathe or change since crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves over to officials. Sevier found that about two-thirds of the kids she examined had symptoms of respiratory infection. The guards wore surgical masks, but the detainees breathed the air unfiltered. As the children filed in, Sevier said she found evidence of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnutrition too.”

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