…you know how they say “start as you mean to go on”?

Britain begins the new year just as it ended the old one, in the middle of a wave of labor unrest that has involved as many as 1.5 million workers so far, concentrated in the public sector and formerly state-owned businesses. Nurses in England, Northern Ireland and Wales walked out twice last month; ambulance crews have staged their largest work stoppage in decades; and border agents, postal staff and garbage collectors have taken similar action in a “winter of discontent.”
[…]
But in general, support for the strikers has stayed strong, according to a YouGov opinion poll last month, which showed 66 percent of respondents supported striking nurses and 28 percent opposed them, 58 favoring firefighters with 33 against, and 43 percent in favor of rail workers with 49 opposed. Another poll, by Savanta ComRes, found the same percentage in support of further rail strikes, but only 36 percent opposed.
[…]
The wave of strikes comes amid Britain’s cost-of-living crisis and follows years of constrained public spending, and unions say they are responding to a decade of neglect of vital services.

“I think the fact that this comes after 10 to 12 years of austerity has affected the public mood and is maybe what’s helping the unions and their members not to lose public support,” said Peter Kellner, a polling expert. “The evidence so far is that public opinion hasn’t materially shifted. I don’t see any particular reason why it should, especially with the health service,” he added.
[…]
Public sympathy is being driven by a widespread feeling that the health system is understaffed and overwhelmed. One senior doctor made headlines by warning that as many as 500 patients a week could be dying because of long delays in emergency rooms across the country. And on Monday the vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said many emergency departments were in a state of crisis.
[…]
Mr. Sunak’s tough stance is a gamble. If the strikes collapse, that could build his reputation as a leader able to stand firm and administer tough measures to stabilize the economy. It could also bolster his leadership within a fractious Conservative Party, where standing up to trade unions is associated with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who came to power in 1979 after labor unrest also known as the winter of discontent and faced down striking miners.
[…]
In the meantime, rail travelers must decide whether to even try to head to the office this week. As one rail operator warned: “Until Jan. 8, only travel by train if absolutely necessary.”

Amid Fresh Wave of U.K. Strikes, Support for Many Walkouts Remains High

…it’s not like a lot of this stuff hasn’t been a long time coming…which…might say something about the lack of preparation to deal with the underlying issues…but…it does seem like non-starters might be developing into a bit of a theme

Opening day in the House of Representatives is typically marked by the usual pageantry and the fleeting promise that this Congress will work better than the last. That hope could be immediately dashed this year if the House fails to elect a speaker on the first ballot and descends into a floor fight unprecedented in modern times.

A small band of Republican misfits has vowed to vote against Kevin McCarthy, the party’s nominee for speaker. With a razor-thin majority, just five Republicans voting against him could deny Mr. McCarthy the gavel. This would be no small event. The House last failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot in 1923, and it’s only happened once since the Civil War.

[…] If Republicans are unable to muster the votes for a speaker, it will make very clear from the outset they cannot be counted on to fulfill the body’s basic responsibilities, such as funding the government and preventing a credit default by lifting the debt ceiling, both of which will be required this year.

Should Mr. McCarthy come up short on the first ballot, it could take several more votes — and days — until we have a new speaker. But no matter who emerges as the top House Republican, the prolonged spectacle would leave the Republican majority hopelessly damaged from the start, along with the institution of the House itself.
[…]
The House cannot function until a speaker is elected and sworn in. Thus the immediate order of business would be to simply vote again. The last time the first vote failed, 100 years ago, it required nine ballots over three days to name a speaker. In 1856, the speakership wasn’t resolved until the 133rd ballot.
[…]
Lawmakers could decide to change the process whereby a speaker is elected. Twice the House has voted to allow a speaker to be elected by a plurality rather than a majority vote. Both instances predated the Civil War and came only after weeks or, as in 1856, months of deadlock.

The House could also move to adjourn, whether to a date or a certain time. Republicans may want to stop the voting to hold a meeting and attempt to resolve the matter privately. But like everything in the House, adjourning requires a majority, which could prove difficult. House Democrats are unlikely to want to aid Mr. McCarthy, while those Republicans blocking him may not want the balloting to stop.

In the event of a stalemate, Mr. McCarthy could face an important strategic question: Keep members on the floor voting while he seeks to cut a deal or invite an even more unpredictable closed-door meeting of his conference? He may find that the best way out is through — by continuing to vote in a test of wills with people who are defying the choice of their conference.

…though…it’s not exactly new, is it?

In the House, if you have a majority of the votes, you can do anything you want. If you don’t, you can’t do much of anything. It is easy to imagine several rounds of voting taking place in succession before someone wins or members relent and adjourn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-vote.html

…it’s still the same team who seem more interested in their own interest than any concerns about fulfilling their role as a cog in a hypothetically functional machinery of government…& their belief that the best demonstration of power is to be the spanner in the works

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/02/hope-hicks-january-6-domestic-terrorists

…&…well…I for one have a hard time seeing where that role is defensible

Inside the Jan. 6 committee’s massive new evidence trove [Politico]

…much less one that deserves to garner support

The number of ships sailing through this narrow strait, which connects Black Sea ports to wider waters, plummeted when Russia invaded Ukraine 10 months ago and imposed a naval blockade. Under diplomatic pressure, Moscow has begun allowing some vessels to pass, but it continues to restrict most shipments from Ukraine, which together with Russia once exported a quarter of the world’s wheat.
[…]
An enduring global food crisis has become one of the farthest-reaching consequences of Russia’s war, contributing to widespread starvation, poverty and premature deaths.

[…] as deep winter sets in and Russia presses assaults on Ukraine’s infrastructure, the crisis is worsening. Food shortages are already being exacerbated by a drought in the Horn of Africa and unusually harsh weather in other parts of the world.

The United Nations World Food Program estimates that more than 345 million people are suffering from or at risk of acute food insecurity, more than double the number from 2019.
[…]
The food shortages and high prices are causing intense pain across Africa, Asia and the Americas. U.S. officials are especially worried about Afghanistan and Yemen, which have been ravaged by war. Egypt, Lebanon and other big food-importing nations are finding it difficult to pay their debts and other expenses because costs have surged. Even in wealthy countries like the United States and Britain, soaring inflation driven in part by the war’s disruptions has left poorer people without enough to eat.
[…]
But Russia’s intentional disruption of global food supplies poses an entirely different problem.

Moscow has restricted its own exports, increasing costs elsewhere. Most important, it has stopped sales of fertilizer, needed by the world’s farmers. Before the war, Russia was the biggest exporter of fertilizer.

Its hostilities in Ukraine have also had a major impact. From March to November, Ukraine exported an average of 3.5 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds per month, a steep drop from the five million to seven million metric tons per month it exported before the war began in February, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.
[…]
“You’re looking at price increases of everything from 60 percent in the U.S. to 1900 percent in Sudan,” said Sara Menker, the chief executive of Gro Intelligence, a platform for climate and agriculture data that tracks food prices.
[…]
The United States, Brazil and Argentina, key grain producers for the world, have experienced three consecutive years of drought. The level of the Mississippi River fell so much that the barges that carry American grain to ports were temporarily grounded.

The weakening of many foreign currencies against the U.S. dollar has also forced some countries to buy less food on the international market than in years past.
[…]
Over the last six months, food prices have retreated from highs reached this spring, according to an index compiled by the United Nations. But they remain much higher than in previous years.

Farmers have passed on the higher cost by increasing the price of food products. And many farmers are using less fertilizer in their fields. That will result in lower crop yields in the coming seasons, pushing food prices higher.

Subsistence farms, which produce nearly a third of the world’s food, are being hit even harder[…]

In a communiqué issued at the close of their meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November, leaders of the Group of 20 nations said they were deeply concerned by the challenges to global food security and pledged to support the international efforts to keep food supply chains functioning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/02/us/politics/russia-ukraine-food-crisis.html

…I know…it sounds a tad bleak…& it’d be nice to be thinking more positive thoughts…but

In other words, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is nonnegotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mind-set that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s,” as he put it in June.

The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa.
[…]
The postwar order had no place for India at the top table. But now, at a moment when Russia’s military aggression under President Vladimir V. Putin has provided a vivid illustration of how a world of strongmen and imperial rivalry would look, India may have the power to tilt the balance toward an order dominated by democratic pluralism or by repressive leaders.

Which way Mr. Modi’s form of nationalism will lean remains to be seen. It has given many Indians a new pride and bolstered the country’s international stature, even as it has weakened the country’s pluralist and secularist model.
[…]
The Ukraine war, compounding the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, has fueled the country’s ascent. Together they have pushed corporations to make global supply chains less risky by diversifying toward an open India and away from China’s surveillance state. They have accentuated global economic turbulence from which India is relatively insulated by its huge domestic market.

Those factors have contributed to buoyant projections that India, now No. 5, will be the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, behind only the United States and China.
[…]
Nonetheless, India is in no mood to cut ties with Mr. Putin’s Russia, which supported the country with weapons over decades of nonalignment, while the United States cosseted India’s archenemy, Pakistan. Even in a country starkly fractured over Mr. Modi’s policies, this approach has had near universal backing.
[…]
“Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine has diminished trust in Western powers and concentrated people’s minds on how to hedge bets,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent Indian political theorist. “India feels it has the United States figured out: Yes, you will be upset but you’re in no position to do anything about it.”
[…]
With inequality worsening, food security worsening, energy security worsening, and climate change accelerating, more countries are asking what answers the post-1945 Western-dominated order can provide. India, it seems, believes it can be a broker, bridging East-West and North-South divisions.
[…]
It is also situated between two hostile powers, Pakistan and China.

In December, there was another skirmish at the 2,100-mile disputed Chinese-Indian border. Nobody was killed, unlike in 2020, when at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died. But tensions remain high. “The relationship is very fraught,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

Escalation at the border is possible at any moment, but it appears unlikely that India can count on Russia, given Moscow’s growing economic and military dependence on China. That makes India’s strategic relationship with the West critical.

In the light of the war in Ukraine, however, each party is adjusting to the fact that the other will pick and choose its principles.

Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World [NYT]

…the context is…well…a tad bleak…whether or not we happen to be paying attention to it

It was a good year to bury bad news – and bad deeds – as a clutch of dictators, assorted killers and repressive or anti-democratic regimes can testify. In Myanmar, Yemen, Mali, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Afghanistan, to name a few crisis zones, egregious abuses and unrelieved misery attracted relatively scant, perfunctory international scrutiny.

The main reason for 2022’s blinkered perspectives is, of course, Ukraine, Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945. This is not to say war-torn Tigray or Guatemala, strangled slowly by corruption, would otherwise have made global headline news. Hard truth: western interest in developing-world conflicts is generally limited.
[…]
All the same, other international crises, actual or looming, will demand increased attention and resources in 2023. Three geopolitical battlegrounds in particular may be harder to ignore: China’s domineering behaviour in east Asia, the Middle East quagmire, and US-Europe tensions.
[…]
Well-founded worries that China could attempt, in 2023, to make good Xi Jinping’s threat to seize Taiwan by force keep Pentagon wargamers busy. Could the US realistically take on China as well as Russia, effectively defending Taiwan and Ukraine at the same time?

When Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, recently suggested Ukraine consider peace talks, this nightmare scenario of war on two fronts was possibly on his mind. Perhaps he, like Japan, was also thinking about a third potential adversary – North Korea and its proliferating nuclear-capable missiles and drones.

The Middle East, for decades at the heart of US foreign policy, has been relatively neglected since George W Bush’s Iraq debacle and Barack Obama’s Syria cop-out. Yet 2023 could be the year when a host of problems arising from this American distancing comes to a head.

Benny Gantz, Israel’s outgoing defence minister, last week predicted further, bloody escalation in the occupied West Bank resulting from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to give ministerial authority over the area to his anti-Arab coalition partners. Violence involving the Israeli army, Jewish settlers and Palestinians hit record levels in 2022.

Iran is near boiling point, too, owing to sweeping anti-government protests – and because nuclear talks with the west face imminent collapse. Even if Iran makes dramatic concessions, it is hard to see the US president, Joe Biden, cutting a deal with a regime that actively murders and tortures its young women.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/01/ukraine-taiwan-north-korea-iran-palestine-flashpoints-2023

…it’s enough to make you take to the bottle

If the past is prologue, then the tempestuous year that was 2022 should be seen as a guide to what happens to our climate-changed world in the year ahead.
[…]
The International Energy Agency said there were signs that the energy crisis could act as an “accelerant” to a clean energy transition, only to caution that “even in a world of high and volatile fossil fuel prices, it cannot be taken for granted that today’s cost advantages for clean, efficient equipment will translate into more sustainable investment choices.”
[…]
Even as the war laid out the strategic risks of relying on fossil fuels, oil and gas producers made record profits as demand surged for oil and gas from anywhere but Russia. Net income in the sector is expected to reach a record $4 trillion in 2022, double that of the previous year, according to the I.E.A. The consulting firm Deloitte has projected increases in natural gas investment in 2023.
[…]
The world’s rich and poor countries are bitterly divided. Poor countries are smarting from the inequitable distribution of Covid vaccines. Several are on the brink of defaulting on their debts to richer nation creditors. Their economies have been pummeled by extreme weather disasters supersized by global warming.
[…]
Given the geopolitical fault lines, global climate cooperation is not likely to be easy in 2023.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/climate/climate-2023.html

…or at least try to

In June, two men in Virginia were charged with an unusual form of insider trading: selling information about when and where rare bottles of whiskey were going to appear in state-run liquor stores.

According to prosecutors, Edgar Garcia, an employee of Virginia’s alcohol control board, fed the confidential information to Robert Adams, a private collector, who sold the list to scores of people on Facebook for up to $400 each.
[…]
Virginia requires that hard liquor be sold at government-owned outlets, where it is priced significantly lower than in most other states. To control the inevitable rush by bourbon lovers to snap up sought-after bottles for less, the state keeps distribution details a secret, announcing the releases at random times via email and on the board’s Facebook page. Fans then stampede to the stores, and every minute counts.
[…]
The willingness of Mr. Garcia and Mr. Adams (who both pleaded guilty) to commit a felony just to sell information, and the apparent eagerness of others to buy it, is a measure of how much the decade-long bourbon boom has turned into a mania.

Bourbon and rye, the leading styles of American whiskey, have long been considered workaday drinks, sold at working-class prices. As recently as the early 2010s, it was hard to find a bottle priced above $100, and most sold below $50. Even as the market for six-figure single-malt Scotches boomed, collectors largely shunned American whiskey, aside from a few standouts like Pappy Van Winkle.

That has all changed. At an auction at Sotheby’s last spring, several bottles of Michter’s bourbon sold for more than $20,000 apiece. A new brand, the Macklowe, is selling its American single malt for $1,500. And a bottle of LeNell’s Red Hook Rye, an extremely rare whiskey bottled in the late 2000s by a Brooklyn liquor-store owner, LeNell Camacho Santa Ana, can go for more than $90,000.

The price leap is not just at the luxury level. Everyday bourbons like Buffalo Trace or Eagle Rare, which once sold for about $35, now often go for twice that.

…long story short…& I say this with a certain amount of feeling having watched the previously-affordable single malts of my youth ratchet their way up the price scale to an extent that has long made me contemplate the inappropriate nomenclature of the term “free market”…when the dog catches the car…it’s seldom great for the folks that have to shell out for the result

In the early 1980s, Elmer T. Lee, an unassuming Kentuckian who worked as the distillery manager at what is now called Buffalo Trace, told his bosses that American whiskey was every bit as nuanced and elegant as single-malt Scotch, and in the right packaging could be sold at luxury prices. The owners, desperate for money, asked him to prove it.

He responded with Blanton’s, the first single-barrel bourbon. He had a bottle custom-made, complete with a metal-and-cork top, and in 1984 he released it at about $30. For decades, that’s roughly where it sat, creeping up with inflation to about $60 in 2018.

Then, suddenly and for reasons no one can quite explain, Blanton’s went viral. Podcasters talked it up. Instagrammers hyped it. Customers lined up to buy bottles, even after store owners tripled or quadrupled the price. In New York, it often sells for more than $300.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/dining/drinks/bourbon-prices-american-whiskey.html

…but at the end of the day…even when the bottom line is more along the lines of the water table…there’s some truth to the idea that necessity is the mother of invention

Persistent dry conditions are driving up the cost of water and prompting more resistance to new development. But the scarcity of water is also pushing developers to innovate with design and install expensive infrastructure to save fresh water and recycle more wastewater.

A deep drought has settled on the Southwest since 2000, exacerbated by climate change. Water flow has dropped precipitously in the Colorado River and other surface water supplies that serve Arizona and its neighboring states. That is putting more pressure to supply homes and businesses from finite water reserves held in aquifers.
[…]
In Arizona, groundwater levels are falling so fast that thousands of residential wells all over the state are going dry. In 2021, the Arizona Department of Water Resources halted new-home construction in Pinal County, south of Phoenix, because groundwater pumping exceeded the supply.
[…]
The adage in the West that “water runs uphill to money” applies. This year, Arizona lawmakers approved a $1 billion, three-year appropriation, essentially a down payment to secure stable water supplies.

…the necessity part is pretty clear…& in fairness…there’s some inventive propositions to be found

One example is Sterling Ranch near Littleton, Colo., a development with roads and parks that are designed to collect and store storm water for reuse. The 3,400-acre project will have a $350 million closed-loop water supply system that collects, treats and recycles wastewater for more than 12,500 residences, as well as commercial and retail spaces. The developers are also studying how to most efficiently collect and use rainwater from rooftops.
[…]
Another example is Verrado, an 8,800-acre planned community in Buckeye, Ariz., that houses 16,000 residents. Along with 30,000 trees for shade and to slow evaporation, Verrado features a water recycling system that collects all of the wastewater from homes and businesses and directs it to a treatment plant capable of recycling 1.5 million gallons a day that is stored and used to irrigate two golf courses.

…you can speculate about what bottom line might be the motivating force

The intensifying attention to water supply is especially relevant to the Teravalis project. Hughes Corporation paid $600 million to purchase the property from its previous owners, who had proposed to use 3,000 acres for a planned community that would rely on the Hassayampa Basin, an aquifer beneath the project, to supply water. In 2006, the Arizona Department of Water Resources issued two certificates to supply and build 7,000 homes.

Those certificates are still valid, but Hughes Corporation does not have access to supply water to the remaining 34,000 acres — more than 90 percent of its property. The Department of Water Resources has put the Hassayampa Basin off limits to new development while it studies how much water the underground reserve actually holds.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/business/water-development-west.html

…at the risk of lurching further into the realms of existential terror…considering that upwards of 70% of the surface of the globe is covered in it…& in some cases there seems to be entirely too much of the stuff for comfort

Flood warnings and watches were in effect on Monday in parts of northern California in the aftermath of a powerful “atmospheric river” storm that drenched the state over New Year’s weekend.

A new weather system was predicted by afternoon or evening, but the National Weather Service said the rain would be modest until the arrival late on Tuesday of another strong atmospheric river, a long plume of Pacific Ocean moisture.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/02/flood-warnings-northern-california-storm

…you’d be forgiven for thinking that if there was one thing we shouldn’t be short of it’d be water…but…there’s always a but

Most water in Earth’s atmosphere and on its crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 3.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land. In all, water from oceans and marginal seas, saline groundwater and water from saline closed lakes amount to over 97% of the water on Earth, though no closed lake stores a globally significant amount of water. Saline groundwater is seldom considered except when evaluating water quality in arid regions.

The remainder of Earth’s water constitutes the planet’s fresh water resource. Typically, fresh water is defined as water with a salinity of less than 1 percent that of the oceans – i.e. below around 0.35‰. Water with a salinity between this level and 1‰ is typically referred to as marginal water because it is marginal for many uses by humans and animals. The ratio of salt water to fresh water on Earth is around 50 to 1.

The planet’s fresh water is also very unevenly distributed. Although in warm periods such as the Mesozoic and Paleogene when there were no glaciers anywhere on the planet all fresh water was found in rivers and streams, today most fresh water exists in the form of ice, snow, groundwater and soil moisture, with only 0.3% in liquid form on the surface. Of the liquid surface fresh water, 87% is contained in lakes, 11% in swamps, and only 2% in rivers. Small quantities of water also exist in the atmosphere and in living beings.

Although the total volume of groundwater is known to be much greater than that of river runoff, a large proportion of this groundwater is saline and should therefore be classified with the saline water above. There is also a lot of fossil groundwater in arid regions that has never been renewed for thousands of years; this must not be seen as renewable water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth

…0.3%…you’d think that sort of relative scarcity might make for something it’d be hard to take for granted…but…if only because I’m uncomfortably conscious of the extent to which this is yet another massive downer I seem to be serving up

This thick, healthy kelp – a type of seaweed – forms a small part of underwater forests that blanket the coastline of nearly every continent. Some are relatively well-studied, including the Great African Sea Forest, a rich stretch of giant bamboo kelp spreading north from Cape Town to the Namibian coastline that was the setting for the film My Octopus Teacher; and the Great Southern Reef, a giant kelp forest hugging Australia’s southern coastline. But many more of these forests are unnamed and unknown – hidden underwater.

Despite being one of the fastest growing plants on Earth, kelp has historically been difficult to map because of the difficulties of measuring ocean depths with satellites. However, research published in September found that seaweed forests are far more extensive than previously realised.

An international group of scientists from eight countries, led by Dr Albert Pessarrodona from the University of Western Australia, manually sifted through hundreds of studies – including local plant data records, online repositories and citizen science initiatives – to model the global distribution of ocean forests. They found that underwater forests cover between 6m and 7.2m sq km – an area comparable to the Amazon rainforest basin and twice the size of India.

Seaweed forests can act as a vital buffer against the climate crisis, absorbing carbon dioxide from seawater and the atmosphere. Ocean forests may store as much carbon as the Amazon rainforest, according to one analysis.

Yet there is still a sizeable gap in understanding of seaweed’s long-term ability to sequester carbon, because it lacks a root system to lock the carbon into the ground, unlike other marine plants such as mangroves and seagrass. Whether carbon stays locked up also depends on what happens to the seaweed, and there is still scientific debate on how effective it is at storing the element.
[…]
The scientists examined hundreds of individual studies from around the world where seaweed growth had been measured by scuba divers. “We found ocean forests are more productive than many intensely farmed crops such as wheat, rice and corn,” the study noted. It defined productivity in terms of how much biomass – the fronds, stipes and holdfasts of the seaweed – was produced by crops and seaweed.

On average, ocean forests in temperate regions, such as Australia’s southern coast, produced between two and 11 times more biomass by area than intensely farmed crops, a productivity that could be harnessed for the food system.

Seaweed has been mass-consumed in Asia for centuries, and now western markets are catching on, albeit on a small scale, with more European and North American companies manufacturing seaweed products for human consumption. The Cornish Seaweed Company has a seaweed salad range; Marks & Spencer has a “coconut seaweed crunch” snack, and there are numerous lines of kelp burgers.
[…]
However, [marine biologist Amanda Swinimer, who has been wild harvesting seaweed for decades through her company, Dakini Tidal Wilds] adds, as food security becomes more of an issue, “people are looking for other sources of nutritious food. If harvested properly, seaweeds have the potential to be a very sustainable and nutrient-dense food source.” Seaweed is also being used as animal feed, in place of corn and soya beans, thanks to its high nutritional value.

Yet these underwater forests face multiple threats, including rising sea temperatures, pollution and invasive species. Along the northern California coast, kelp has declined by more than 95% over the past several years, decimated by sea urchins – whose population has exploded as vast numbers of starfish, their main predators, have been killed by a wasting disease linked to warming waters.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/02/kelp-seaweed-forests-research-climate-crisis

…it’s not an insurmountable task to pool this particular resource even when…indeed arguably especially when…it’s scarce

…it’s about 20mins long…& it’s hardly the only interesting talk given on the topic of water, why we need it, how much there is of the stuff, or how to get hold of it…there’s hours of that stuff just in those links alone…&…at least some of that…much like mr. mishra’s little lecture there…comes down on the side of we can do this…if we can get our heads around it…after all…it’s not like it isn’t in our best interests to stay hydrated

Adults who aren’t sufficiently hydrated may age faster, face a higher risk of chronic diseases and be more likely to die younger than those who stay well-hydrated, according to a new study from the National Institutes of Health.

…as ever…we can quibble about methodology

The results, published Monday, are based on data collected over 25 years from more than 11,000 adults in the U.S. The participants attended their first medical visits at ages 45 to 66, then returned for follow-ups through at ages 70 to 90.

…& what might be a proxy for what…or a reasonable extrapolation

The researchers looked at levels of sodium in the participants’ blood as a proxy for hydration, because higher concentrations are a sign that they most likely weren’t consuming enough fluids. The researchers found that the participants with high blood-sodium levels aged faster physiologically than those with lower levels, which was reflected in health markers associated with aging, like high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
[…]
The relationship between drinking fluids and age-related chronic diseases remains “highly speculative,” said Dr. Lawrence Appel, the director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins University.

…but…what with those “extreme weather phenomena” that seem to be coming thick & fast…you might say it sounds like it might bear thinking about…if you can bear to think about it

people would probably need much higher blood-sodium levels (150 millimoles per liter or above — the kind of dehydration one might experience during an extreme heat wave) to see negative health outcomes as a result.
[…]
Asher Rosinger, the director of the Water, Health and Nutrition Lab at Penn State College of Health and Human Development, said it’s more likely that chronic dehydration speeds the aging process than that good hydration could help slow it down.

Proper hydration “will ensure kidneys work properly and extra stress isn’t placed on the body physiologically,” he said in an email.

…& the good news is…you’re most likely properly hydrated

Appel, meanwhile, said the traditional recommendation to drink about eight glasses of water a day is “really not based on any scientific evidence.” His research has found that people’s normal drinking behavior usually leads to adequate hydration.

“Dehydration in the general population is just not a common issue,” he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/poor-hydration-linked-early-aging-chronic-disease-study

…&…sometimes the journey of a thousand miles offers a premium return on those first steps

A little exertion can go a long way in improving health, according to a new study.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Nature Medicine, suggests that short bursts of intense movement — the kind that leaves you huffing and puffing — is associated with a lower risk of premature death.

[…]They chose participants who’d said they did not exercise or play sports and went on one or fewer recreational walks per week.

But 89% of those people, the analysis found, still exerted themselves through daily activities like climbing flights of stairs, running for the bus or carrying heavy groceries. The researchers defined this type of heart-rate-raising movement as “vigorous activity.”

Just one to two minutes of such activity three to four times daily, the results showed, was associated with an up to 40% lower risk of death over the course of seven years, relative to the people who did not engage in any vigorous activity. The risk of dying from heart disease was reduced even further: up to 49%.
[…]
Loretta DiPietro, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at George Washington University, said the new research is “the best evidence I’ve seen so far” that short bursts of movement have strong health benefits.

“For years, everybody assumed that the health benefits of physical activity required at least 10 minutes,” she said. But now, “we are observing benefits at shorter and shorter durations.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vigorous-activity-couple-minutes-lower-risk-death

…marginal gains are not to be sneezed at…& if you believe some people…may actually reduce your likelihood of sneezing in the first place

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jan/01/marginal-gains-100-ways-to-improve-your-life-without-really-trying

…plus…if you made it this far…chances are you’re already bucking the trend

Early last year, the Centre for Attention Studies at King’s College London found that 49% of 2,000 adults surveyed felt their attention span was shorter than it used to be. Almost as many (47%) agreed that “‘deep thinking’ has become a thing of the past”. These are generalisations and impossible to quantify – we have no consistent measure of attention or deep thinking, let alone of contrasting those through history with today’s. But the response proves that we at least perceive there’s a problem.
[…]
Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought on attention. The first argues that we haven’t lost our ability to focus, it has been wrested, even “stolen”, from us by technology. In this view we’re little more than lab rats lured by notifications and algorithms, pings and dings in a large-scale social experiment. We may develop strategies for resisting those dopamine dispensers, such as blocking software or switching to a “brick phone”. But the game is rigged against us.

Those in the second camp may scoff at this: they maintain that most of our struggles with focus are more to do with self-control. There is no notification that can distract us unless we are on some level willing to be distracted. Even the notion of a “shorter attention span” may provoke scepticism. Instead, could it be that you’re just not that motivated? Whichever worldview you subscribe to – that our attention has been hijacked by our devices, or by our lack of self-discipline – they share an element of fatalism: there is either little you can do, or you’re just not doing enough.

[Gloria] Mark [professor of informatics at the University of California] believes that neither of these views is quite right. In Attention Span[: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life] she dismantles common misconceptions about our attention, among them that we should always be striving to focus when at work on our computers, and that the mindless scrolling we do on screens is counterproductive. The reality is more nuanced, says Mark – but our digital lives have evolved so fast, we have found ourselves struggling to keep up or safeguard ourselves.

“That’s why I think we’ve got to this point, where we’re having such a hard time controlling our attention, because we haven’t figured out yet how we can integrate this technology in our lives, and use it wisely.”
[…]
The very design of the internet mirrors how we think, explaining how we can lose hours down a rabbit hole on YouTube or Wikipedia. “In terms of a semantic network, we think naturally in terms of associations, and the internet just aligns with that so well,” says Mark. Stress and exhaustion further exacerbate the problem, diminishing our ability to resist temptation. It means the line between free will and conditioning has blurred: we might genuinely want to learn more, or we might be impulsively clicking on links. Either way, our curiosity is aroused and – with the next video or webpage – rewarded, perpetuating the cycle.

The many influences Mark identifies on our attention – individual, social, environmental, technological – emphasises not only the scale of the challenge, but the limits of zeroing in on any one of them for a potential solution. Distraction isn’t a tech problem, or a people problem – it’s both, inextricably intertwined. Indeed, one of Mark’s most disquieting findings is that we have become so accustomed to being interrupted, we do it to ourselves. Mark found that email trumped social media as a source of interruptions, with study participants checking their inboxes an average of 77 times daily (one checked 374 times). But most concerning was that 41% were doing so of their own accord, without external triggers. It’s proof that even if we turn off notifications, we can’t escape those internal triggers.

[…] It is no more possible for us to sustain focus all day than it is for us to lift weights nonstop, she says – yet that is exactly what many of us expect of ourselves, at the expense of our own wellbeing. The problem is felt well beyond the small segment of the population with ADHD, says Mark. “People are saying we have this ‘epidemic of ADHD’, but we should hold back on making that claim.” More research is needed into any relation between ADHD and use of personal devices – but it may be that people are simply exhausted and trying, and failing to focus.
[…]
In Attention Span, Mark makes the case for a new, evidence-based approach to attention, one that works with our tech-riddled modern world and tendencies towards distraction, instead of trying to squeeze the genie back in the bottle. “We are stuck with technology, we can’t give it up, so let’s not even talk about that – but we can use it in an intelligent way, to find the benefits.” Rather than aspiring towards flow, or always being focused, Mark suggests we should aim for a “balance of attentional states” that reflects our natural circadian rhythms.
[…]
At the societal level, Mark supports “right to disconnect” laws to combat email overload, but says the cultural shift may have to come first. She suggests cultivating “meta-awareness” of our own attention – whether we have resources to burn, or need to refuel – and engagement with tech. “If you end up going to social media, keep yourself in the present by asking: ‘Am I still getting value out of being here?’” If not, and you’re feeling increasingly drained or, conversely, refreshed, “then leave,” Mark says. It is a more pragmatic – and even, dare I say, empowering – outlook on our technological future than many. “I am very optimistic that we can take control, and change the way things are,” agrees Mark. But the first step is accepting that our attention, like our time, is finite – and that we can choose how we spend it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/is-modern-life-ruining-our-powers-of-concentration

…so…you got that going for you…plus the part where I’ll stop going on now…but it bears mentioning that…speaking for myself…I sincerely appreciate the fact that folks hereabouts still find this little corner of the online landscape something they can find the time to attend to…very possibly as much as you probably appreciate the part where I STFU & [as soon as I turn a few up] make with some people worth listening to?