bartleby

Pre-pandemic preppers tend to be associated with an irrational fear of “doomsday”, while those who stocked up on vital goods during the pandemic have been (often unfairly) portrayed as hoarders. We propose a new kind of prepping, without the anticipation of doomsday and the stigma of hoarding. Here are four ways to become a responsible prepper.

The United Nations Security Council held its first meeting on artificial intelligence on Tuesday where China said the technology should not become a "runaway horse.”

The United States warned against its use to censor or repress people.

Britain's Foreign Secretary James Cleverly warned that the technology fuels disinformation and could aid both state and non-state actors in a quest for weapons.

Russia questioned whether the council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security, should be discussing AI.

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea Wednesday in what appeared to be a statement of defiance as the United States deployed a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea for the first time in decades.

The launches came as the U.S. and the U.S.-led United Nations Command worked to resolve the highly unusual situation involving a U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea while on a tour of a border village Tuesday afternoon.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that from 3:30 to 3:46 a.m. North Korea fired two missiles from an area near the capital Pyongyang that flew about 550 kilometers (341 miles) before landing in waters east of the Korean Peninsula.

The Japanese military said the missiles landed outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone and no damage to ships or aircraft was reported.

The flight distance of the two missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the USS Kentucky arrived Tuesday afternoon in the first visit by a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s.

Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities".

But "it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".

He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive information.

Gen Ryder did not confirm a Wall Street Journal report that American-made equipment was part of the balloon, but he said that Chinese drones in the past have used off-the-shelf US equipment.

TL;DR: New owner found the previous owner's stash and wants to convert the room back into a movie/theater room.

TBH, If I were the new owner, I would just keep whatever supplies are still good, probably reorder the room a bit, and use extra space for other things as intended by the new owner. Disposing of the entire prepper stash would be a waste, IMHO.

The two scenarios he gave as examples, and we promise we're not making this up, were a "super contagious" lab-modified virus "being released" onto the world population and "AI that attacks us."

OK, so COVID already happened (the interview mentioned was supposedly pre-COVID). I wonder if Altman's openAI or other AI tech end up attacking us, too.

"Oppenheimer" is a historical film, but the threat posed by nuclear weapons is very real today. Nine countries now have nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia possessing about 90% of the world’s nearly 13,000 weapons.

You might be tempted to think you would be safe if nuclear weapons were used halfway across the globe from your location. Sure, you would be able to avoid the immediate blast effects, but you would experience the after-effects. There is significant evidence that the entire globe could be impacted by even a small-scale nuclear war.

For example, one study assessed the global effects of a “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan, revealing that the fires produced in the conflict would send so much soot into the atmosphere that the sun’s rays would be diminished for years. This would result in reduced global temperatures, which in turn would cause widespread crop failures and worldwide famine, potentially affecting billions of people.

Jet streams are relatively narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere, typically occurring around 30,000 feet, and blowing west to east. Their normal flows lead to week-to-week weather variations, modulated in the mid-latitudes by ridges and troughs in the jet stream. A high-pressure ridge, for example, produces clear, warmer weather conditions; a trough is typically followed by stormy conditions. Together, these form waves in the jet stream that can stall as the waves grow and become more amplified, causing "stuck" weather patterns that produce longer storms and heat waves.

New research published in Nature Communications describes observations linking increased warming at high latitudes and the ever-decreasing snow cover in North America to these stalls in atmospheric circulation.

South Korea's president vowed Monday to "completely overhaul" the country's approach to extreme weather from climate change after at least 40 people were killed by recent flooding and landslides during monsoon rains. Rescue workers waded through thick mud as they drained a flooded underpass in central Cheongju, searching for more victims after vehicles were trapped in the tunnel by flash floods, the interior ministry said, with nine people still missing nationwide.

South Korea is at the peak of its summer monsoon season, and days of torrential rain have caused widespread flooding and landslides, with rivers bursting their banks, and reservoirs and dams overflowing. More rain is forecast in the coming days.

Paywalled, but of course you can use reader mode to read the text.

The scientists think changes to working hours would be especially beneficial for people for those working outdoors or in buildings not designed to withstand extreme temperatures.

But even in workspaces equipped with the cool breeze of air conditioning units, the researchers warn of a “vicious cycle” where people burn more fossil fuels to provide energy for air con which then heats the climate still further, requiring more energy. So even office workers would do well to clock out earlier.

It’s almost too much to get your head around: that we have shaped the world so profoundly in what is, in the Earth’s history, the blink of an eye. Most of the geological epochs in the past 4.6bn years have lasted millions of years each time. According to the Anthropocene Working Group, the Anthropocene is thought to have begun in the 1950s, when industrialisation accelerated. One of its hallmarks is that we humans are affecting the conditions of life everywhere, all at once. We have instigated a sixth mass extinction of other species; we have changed the biosphere and altered the chemistry of the oceans by burning fossil fuels; we have uprooted forests and poisoned land with chemicals.

I've been posting about this topic for several days now. It's because I personally feel vulnerable to disasters brought about by extreme effects of climate change, e.g., unusually severe weather, flooding, and unusually hot days (and the excess load on the grid this brings about). These are what I prep for.

Why South Koreans are rushing to stockpile salt

Japan is set to release more than 1 million metric tons of water into the Pacific that was used to cool damaged reactors at the power plant north of Tokyo, after it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Tokyo has repeatedly assured that the water is safe and has been filtered to remove most isotopes though it does contain traces of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen hard to separate from water.

Although Japan has not set a date for the release, the announcement has made fishermen and shoppers across the region apprehensive.

(edited the link)