Corner of M

unromanticann:

unromanticann:

unhappy reminder that amphibians are going through a pandemic right now and anything you can do to support conservation efforts would be greatly appreciated by literally everyone in the world

and for those of you who don’t click links here’s a summary of the scale of the issue as of march 28 2019:

• basically a pathogen is affecting and killing off amphibians at an alarming rate globally
• it’s been spread through trade of frog meat and pets primarily
• its already done more damage to biodiversity than cats and rats
• the pathogen can affect at least 695 species to varying degrees
• 90 species either confirmed extinction or assumed extinct in the wild
• 124 species undergoing a decline of over 90%
• 501 species in decline which means about 1 in 16 of every species known to science is affected
• it has “has damaged global biodiversity more than any other disease ever recorded.” which is fucking terrifying
• efforts to curve the effects include urging governments to crack down on the trade of amphibians, protecting their natural habitats, combatting invasive species, and supporting breeding programs

(via scientificphilosopher)

unicef:

Pneumonia is a very common illness that causes infection in the lungs. At best, it causes mild symptoms such as a cough or fever; at worst it can cause death. Unfortunately, pneumonia is one of those illnesses that seems to get swept under the rug - but no more! In recognition of World Pneumonia Day on 12 November, UNICEF wants to get the word out so we can all help save and protect children around the world.

1.    Everyone can get pneumonia

One common myth is that pneumonia mostly affects older people. However, everyone is at risk. This includes children, especially those who live in areas with high levels of air pollution. In fact, half of all pneumonia deaths in children are linked to air pollution!

2.    Pneumonia is the leading infectious killer of children under five. 

Even though pneumonia is preventable and treatable, 922,000 children died from it last year. That’s 2,500 children per day and 1 every 35 seconds! Pneumonia in the most deadly infectious disease in children, causing more deaths than malaria, tuberculosis, measles and AIDS combined!

3.    A lot less children are dying from pneumonia!

Between 2000 and 2015 the amount of deaths in children from pneumonia decreased by 47%! That is awesome, but there is still more work to be done. This is the slowest rate of decline among (the main) childhood diseases.

4.    The majority of childhood pneumonia cases occur in 10 countries.

60% of deaths occur in Chad, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Indonesia. Pneumonia is more common in rural areas, poor areas and areas with poor air quality and unclean water.

5.    There are a lot of ways to fight pneumonia. 

These include vaccines, breastfeeding, access to safe drinking water, improving overall sanitation, good nutritional habits for children and improving air quality, especially inside the home. It all starts with raising awareness and sharing solutions.

You can do something today: help us get the word out! One death from pneumonia is one too many. If you want to get involved and help save the lives of thousands of children visit everybreathcounts.info

kierongillen:

carriagelamp:

dearnonacepeople:

So let me get this straight, in Monopoly if you give one player more money to start out it’s “unfair” but if you do it in real life it’s “capitalism”? 

You know what, I’m going to tell you guys a story.

In my Sociology class a few semesters ago, our prof had us break off into groups and, much to our naive joy, began distributing Monopoly boards! We had no idea what was going on but yay! Games! Of course, once our group, and a number of others, got the board we began to work at setting up and distributing the money…

until suddenly our prof told us to put the money down and pick up the dice.

“Roll the dice and sort yourselves from highest to lowest,” our teacher commanded.  "Now, the highest number is the upper class. The next one is upper middle class.  The next two or three are middle class. The last person is in poverty.“

Well, as the person who rolled a two this was startling and not wholly welcome news.

From that point the game changed entirely. We had to hand out the money so that the “upper class” had this fucking mountain, and then less for upper middle, even less for middle, and I didn’t get any triple digit bills. We would all collect different amounts from passing go as well.

The biggest change though? Going to jail. Upper class didn’t. Period. Upper middle class could go but they only had to stay for one turn or they could immediately pay their way out. Middle class had some pretty easy guidelines for when they could pay to get out. As lower class, it was really easy for me to wind up in jail and REALLY hard to get out. But since I was working with so little money when everyone else had so much I was in jail all the time because there was no “game over”.  If I couldn’t pay I had to go to jail for a certain period of time. I had to take out loans with interest I could never pay back just to get out only to wind up back in it again, rolling dice turn after turn hoping to be able to get out.

It was simultaneously the most enlightening and most awful game I had ever played. I was bored and frustrated and a little terrified about it all. And it wasn’t only me. I would never win, I sort of accepted this, but it was amazing how the middle classes reacted as well.  They were stressed. Because they were always that close to either being able to one-up the upper class or from crashing into poverty with me. They had to fight constantly just to stay in the middle.

(I should also mention that the upper class player in one group felt so bad for the lower income players that they ended up overhauling their entire game and creating a “socialist” society instead. I’m not sure how our teacher felt about that one.)

Worth stressing this is entirely in the spirit of the original designer’s aims for Monopoly. 

Monopoly’s  original form of The Landlord Game which was explicitly designed to teach people about the unfairness of rent systems. To quote from the wikipedia entry, just as it’s the easiest source to hand…

Magie designed the game to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences”.^[2] She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed byHenry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate.

When the usual suspects start making “don’t bring politics into games” noises, I roll my eyes pretty hard. They have no idea of the history of the form.

(via mckelvie)