The New Yorker: How suffering farmers may determine Trump's fate

The New Yorker: How suffering farmers may determine Trump's fate

By Dan Kaufman

As big diary farms continue to take over small, rural ones, the families that operate them are getting angrier that they are being neglected. This was the reason that Trump defeated Clinton in a state that Obama had carried both times. After Richard Nixon's administration in the 1970's and the big push for bigger farms to produce more, smaller farms have struggled. Suicides have gone up, and Republican legislation in the state has reduced wages even more. On top of that, Trump's trade war with China, Canada, and Mexico have increased dairy tariffs and/or cut off exports entirely. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic stalled exports and refineries, making farmers dump millions of gallons down the drain, which had both economic and environmental impacts.

    In 2016, Trump campaigned extensively in the Driftless area, where big companies haven't yet penetrated because of the terrain. He promised to take care of the rural people. This area is key to politics in Wisconsin, as can be seen in past gubernatorial elections. Clinton, on the other hand, failed to recognize the state at all, taking almost for granted. Trump has lost much of his Driftless region base due to his policies in office, and Biden could take advantage of that.

    And he already has. He has aired many ads and virtual rallies in the area, along with a session devoted entirely to rural farmers. Many farmers there are just holding on, and maybe the change they need is on the way.

Mockingjay

Mockingjay

By Suzanne Collins

Book 3 in series

Book 1! The Hunger Games

Book 2! Catching Fire

Book 4! The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Weeks have passed since the mayhem at the Quarter Quell and the bombing of District 12. The survivors are now in District 13 with Katniss and the other victors who were helping the rebellion. District 13 was thought to have been destroyed in the rebel defeat 75 years ago, but it wasn't. It was the original Capitol military base, and it had nukes. It reached an agreement with the Capitol to pretend to disappear if the Capitol left it alone. Now, the above ground is in ruins and everyone lives underground.

    Katniss returns to the ruins of District 12 to collect a few things, and returns in time to see Caesar Flickerman's interview with Peeta. He claims that she didn't know about the rebels and that everyone should call for a ceasefire. Katniss knows the District 13 military will see this as treason, and leaves the military room in a rush. Fortunately, Gale helps her figure out that she can use her Mockingjay role to her advantage. She tells President Coin she will play her part only if she assures that Buttercup, the family cat, can stay, all the victors who were captured by the Capitol get full pardons when the war is over, Gale will be her partner in battle, and most importantly, she gets to kill Snow. Coin agrees to announce this to the public so that she can't go back on her word.

TedEd: How close are we to uploading our minds?

A TedEd by Michael S. A. Graziano

Could we avoid death one day by uploading our minds? In such a future, the deceased could live in a simulated world with an avatar and also be able to communicate with living people. So what would it take to do that? First, we need to know what to scan. Our brains have billions of neurons with trillions of synapses to connect them, all of which is called the connectome. There are also hundreds of types of synapses, all of which serve a different purpose. There are also many other influences on neural patterns, many of which are largely unknown. For example, a cell type called glia were once thought to simply support the brain, but scientists now believe that some can influence our brains. We simply don't understand enough about the brain to know what parts to scan. Once we figure that out, there is the problem of actually scanning the brain itself. To properly scan the brain, we would need resolution of up to 1/1000 of a millimeter. Our best scanning method so far, MRI, can only do a half of a millimeter. Because it relies on magnetic fields, a field strong enough to get good resolution would cook a person's brain. That means we need to conceive a new scanning method altogether. The final step would be to turn a scanned brain into digital information. We need a lot of computing power and storage to do this, but we are actually closer to our goal in this regard. Finally, there is the ethical dilemma. Who would get to upload their minds, and what rights would they have? Could the system be abused? So even if we do get the technological capacity to upload our minds, should we?