No.103 Asides

🇨🇦 🌊 💨 The impact of the climate crisis are getting easier and easier to see. Two shoreline examples in Canada: Quebec’s islands are crumbling and This Arctic Community Is Literally Falling Into the Ocean.
🎉 👀 🇺🇸 Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional. “In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional. ”
🤯 A natural biomolecule has been measured acting like a quantum wave for the first time. “thanks to the work of Armin Shayeghi at the University of Vienna and a few colleagues, who for the first time, have demonstrated quantum interference in molecules of gramicidin, a natural antibiotic made up of 15 amino acids. Their work paves the way for the study of the quantum properties of biomolecules and sets the scene for experiments that exploit the quantum nature of enzymes, DNA, and perhaps one day simple life forms such as viruses.”
🤔 💻 The GitHub Archive Program will safely store every public GitHub repo for 1,000 years in the Arctic World Archive in Svalbard, Norway. “GitHub is partnering with the Long Now Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Software Heritage Foundation, Arctic World Archive, Microsoft Research, the Bodleian Library, and Stanford Libraries to ensure the long-term preservation of the world’s open source software. We will protect this priceless knowledge by storing multiple copies, on an ongoing basis, across various data formats and locations, incluspanding a very-long-term archive designed to last at least 1,000 years.”
🇳🇿 New Zealand passes historic zero carbon bill with near unanimous bipartisan support. “The legislation establishes New Zealand as one of the few countries in the world with a legislated commitment to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, with the New Zealand bill committing to establishing policies consistent with limiting global warming to just 1.5°C.”
🇩🇪 🇪🇬 A German Museum Tried To Hide This Stunning 3D Scan of an Iconic Egyptian Artifact. “After a three-year freedom of information campaign, everyone can finally see the Egyptian Museum of Berlin’s official scan of the Bust of Nefertiti.”
🌞 Moth-Poulsen’s Energy-Trapping Molecule Could Solve Solar Storage. “Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg have figured out how to harness the energy and keep it in reserve so it can be released on demand in the form of heat—even decades after it was captured. The innovations include an energy-trapping molecule, a storage system that promises to outperform traditional batteries, at least when it comes to heating, and an energy-storing laminate coating that can be applied to windows and textiles. ”