Sending presenter by plane to meet Greta Thunberg ‘felt awkward’, BBC editor admits

‘We did not have the time for trains or boats,’ Sarah Sands says

Putting a presenter on a flight to Sweden to meet climate activist Greta Thunberg “felt awkward”, the editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has admitted.

The 16-year-old campaigner, who was a guest editor on a special edition of the show, avoids air travel because of its environmental impact.

The BBC sent presenter Mishal Husain on a return flight to Stockholm to interview her.

“We did discuss that among ourselves,” programme editor Sarah Sands told the Sunday Times. “It felt awkward but we did not have the time for trains or boats.”

The paper said the trip to Stockholm is estimated to have amounted to almost half a tonne of CO2 emissions per person.

Greta started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018, which has since spread all over the world to involve more than 100,000 schoolchildren.

She takes a stand against more polluting forms of transport by sailing rather than flying or travelling in cars.

Greta arrived in New York in August after a 15-day, 3,000-mile voyage across the Atlantic to take part in a UN climate summit.

She sailed from Plymouth in the UK on a zero-emissions yacht to limit the carbon footprint of her travel.

She then set sail in November to Madrid to attend the UN’s annual climate change conference, which will next year be held in Glasgow.

Ms Sands said: “Greta is not actually judgmental towards individuals, accepting that other people will not all conform to her high standards and asking only for people to do what they can.”

(Source: Independent)

Do not disturb: How I ditched my phone and unbroke my brain

My name is Kevin, and I have a phone problem.

And if you’re anything like me — and the statistics suggest you probably are, at least where smartphones are concerned — you have one, too.

I don’t love referring to what we have as an “addiction.” That seems too sterile and clinical to describe what’s happening to our brains in the smartphone era. 

Unlike alcohol or opioids, phones aren’t an addictive substance so much as a species-level environmental shock. We might someday evolve the correct biological hardware to live in harmony with portable supercomputers that satisfy our every need and connect us to infinite amounts of stimulation. But for most of us, it hasn’t happened yet.

Who needs a smartphone when you’ve got ads for discount dentistry?

Credit... Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

I’ve been a heavy phone user for my entire adult life. But sometime last year, I crossed the invisible line into problem territory. My symptoms were all the typical ones: I found myself incapable of reading books, watching full-length movies or having long uninterrupted conversations. Social media made me angry and anxious, and even the digital spaces I once found soothing (group texts, podcasts, YouTube k-holes) weren’t helping. I tried various tricks to curb my usage, like deleting Twitter every weekend, turning my screen grayscale and installing app-blockers. But I always relapsed.

Eventually, in late December, I decided that enough was enough. I called Catherine Price, a science journalist and the author of “How to Break Up With Your Phone,” a 30-day guide to eliminating bad phone habits. And I begged her for help.

Mercifully, she agreed to be my phone coach for the month of January, and walk me through her plan, step by step. Together, we would build a healthy relationship with my phone, and try to unbreak my brain.

‘A Bit Horrifying’

I confess that entering phone rehab feels clichéd, like getting really into healing crystals or Peloton. Digital wellness is a budding industry these days, with loads of self-help gurus offering miracle cures for screen addiction. Some of those solutions involve new devices — such as the “Light Phone,” a device with an extremely limited feature set that is meant to wean users off time-sucking apps. Others focus on cutting out screens entirely for weeks on end. 

You can now buy $299 “digital detox” packages at luxury hotels or join the “digital sabbath” movement, whose adherents vow to spend one day a week using no technology at all.

Thankfully, Catherine’s plan is more practical. I’m a tech columnist, and while I don’t begrudge anyone for trying more extreme forms of disconnection, my job prevents me from going cold turkey.

On a video call with Catherine Price, the Marie Kondo of brains.

Credit... Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

Instead, her program focuses on addressing the root causes of phone addiction, including the emotional triggers that cause you to reach for your phone in the first place. The point isn’t to get you off the internet, or even off social media — you’re still allowed to use Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms on a desktop or laptop, and there’s no hard-and-fast time limit. It’s simply about unhooking your brain from the harmful routines it has adopted around this particular device, and hooking it to better things.

When we started, I sent her my screen time statistics, which showed that I had spent 5 hours and 37 minutes on my phone that day, and picked it up 101 times — roughly twice as many as the average American.

“That is frankly insane and makes me want to die,” I wrote to her.

“I will admit that those numbers are a bit horrifying,” she replied.

Catherine encouraged me to set up mental speed bumps so that I would be forced to think for a second before engaging with my phone. I put a rubber band around the device, for example, and changed my lock screen to one that showed three questions to ask myself every time I unlocked my phone: “What for? Why now? What else?”

For the rest of the week, I became acutely aware of the bizarre phone habits I’d developed. I noticed that I reach for my phone every time I brush my teeth or step outside the front door of my apartment building, and that, for some pathological reason, I always check my email during the three-second window between when I insert my credit card into a chip reader at a store and when the card is accepted.

Putting the beast in its cage.

Credit... Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

Mostly, I became aware of how profoundly uncomfortable I am with stillness. For years, I’ve used my phone every time I’ve had a spare moment in an elevator or a boring meeting. I listen to podcasts and write emails on the subway. I watch YouTube videos while folding laundry. I even use an app to pretend to meditate.

If I was going to repair my brain, I needed to practice doing nothing. So during my morning walk to the office, I looked up at the buildings around me, spotting architectural details I’d never noticed before. On the subway, I kept my phone in my pocket and people-watched — noticing the nattily dressed man in the yellow hat, the teens eating hot Takis and laughing, the kid with Velcro shoes. 

When a friend ran late for our lunch, I sat still and stared out the window instead of checking Twitter.

It’s an unnerving sensation, being alone with your thoughts in the year 2019. Catherine had warned me that I might feel existential malaise when I wasn’t distracting myself with my phone. She also said paying more attention to my surroundings would make me realize how many other people used their phones to cope with boredom and anxiety.

“I compare it to seeing a family member naked,” she said. “Once you look around the elevator and see the zombies checking their phones, you can’t unsee it.”

Withdrawal Sets In

Next, I gave my phone the Marie Kondo treatment — looking at all my apps and keeping the ones that sparked joy and contributed to healthy habits and tossing those that didn’t.

Remember books? They’re like Twitter threads, but longer.

Credit... Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

For me, that meant deleting Twitter, Facebook and all other social media apps, along with news apps and games. I kept messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal, and non-distracting utilities like cooking and navigation apps. I pruned my home screen to just the essentials: calendar, email and password manager. And I disabled push notifications for everything other than phone calls and messages from a preset list of people that included my editor, my wife and a handful of close friends.

Where you keep your phone is also important. Studies have shown that people who don’t charge their phones in their bedrooms are significantly happier than those who do. Catherine charges her phone in a closet; for me, she recommended a locking mini-safe. I bought one and started storing my phone inside, which simultaneously reduced my nighttime usage and made me feel like I was guarding the queen’s jewels.

And I pursued activities that could replace my phone habit. On the recommendation of my colleague Farhad Manjoo, I signed up for pottery classes. As it turned out, pottery makes a perfect phone substitute. It’s manually challenging and demands concentration for hours on end. It gets your hands dirty, too, which is a good deterrent to fiddling with expensive electronics.

And I started to wonder: Was the subway broken, or was I?

Credit... Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

After a pottery class, I updated my wife on my progress. I told her that while it felt great to disconnect, I still worried that I was missing something important. I liked having a constant stream of news at my fingertips, and I wanted to do more of the things I actually like about social media, like keeping tabs on my friends’ babies and maintaining ambient Kardashian awareness.

“I’m sad that you’re having trouble with this,” she said, “because it’s been great for me.”

She explained that since my phone detox started, I’d been more present and attentive at home. I spent more time listening to her, and less time distractedly nodding and mumbling while checking my inbox or tapping out tweets.

Psychologists have a name for this: “phubbing,” or snubbing a person in favor of your phone. Studies have shown that excessive phubbing decreases relationship satisfaction and contributes to feelings of depression and alienation.

For years, I’ve justified my phubbing by treating it as a professional necessity. Isn’t it my job to know when news happens? Won’t I be neglecting my duties if it takes me an extra hour to learn that Jeff Bezos is getting divorced, or another YouTuber did something racist?

I put this question to Catherine, who reassured me that I wasn’t jeopardizing my career by being slightly later to the news. She reminded me that I’d been happier since I dialed down my screen time, and she gently encouraged me to focus on the other side of the cost-benefit analysis.

“Think of the bigger picture of what you’re getting by not being on Twitter all the time.”

A Thoreau Cleansing

The biggest test came with a “trial separation” — a 48-hour period during which I wasn’t allowed to use my phone or any other digital device. (Catherine’s program calls for a 24-hour separation, but I decided to try a more hard-core version.)

I had dreaded this idea at the outset, but when the weekend actually arrived, I got giddy with excitement. I rented an off-the-grid Airbnb in the Catskills, warned my editor that I’d be offline for the weekend and took off.

A phone-free weekend involved some complications. Without Google Maps, I got lost and had to pull over for directions. Without Yelp, I had trouble finding open restaurants.

But mostly, it was great. For two solid days, I basked in 19th-century leisure, feeling my nerves softening and my attention span stretching back out. I read books. I did the crossword puzzle. I lit a fire and looked at the stars. I felt like Thoreau, if Thoreau periodically wondered what was happening on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram story.

I also felt twinges of anger — at myself, for missing out on this feeling of restorative boredom for so many years; at the engineers in Silicon Valley who spend their days profitably exploiting our cognitive weaknesses; at the entire phone-industrial complex that has convinced us that a six-inch glass-and-steel rectangle is the ideal conduit for worldly experiences.

Sadly, there is no way to talk about the benefits of digital disconnection without sounding like a Goop subscriber or a neo-Luddite. Performative wellness is obnoxious, as is reflexive technophobia.

But I cannot stress enough that under the right conditions, spending an entire weekend without a phone in your immediate vicinity is incredible. You have to try it.

Rewired and Renewed

Allow me a bit of bragging: Over the course of 30 days, my average daily phone time, as measured by the iPhone’s built-in screen time tracker, has dwindled from around five hours to just over an hour. I now pick up my phone only about 20 times a day, down from more than 100. I still use my phone for email and texting — and I’m still using my laptop plenty — but I don’t itch for social media, and I often go hours without so much as a peek at any screen.

In one of our conversations, I asked Catherine if she worried that I would relapse. She said it was possible, given the addictive properties of phones and the likelihood that they’ll only keep getting more essential. But she said that as long as I remained aware of my relationship with my phone, and continued to notice when and how I used it, I’d have gotten something valuable.

“Your life is what you pay attention to,” she said. “If you want to spend it on video games or Twitter, that’s your business. But it should be a conscious choice.”

One of the most unexpected benefits of this program is that by getting some emotional distance from my phone, I’ve started to appreciate it again. I keep thinking: Right here, in my pocket, is a device that can summon food, cars and millions of other consumer goods to my door. I can talk with everyone I’ve ever met, create and store a photographic record of my entire life, and tap into the entire corpus of human knowledge with a few swipes.

Steve Jobs wasn’t exaggerating when he described the iPhone as a kind of magical object, and it’s truly wild that in the span of a few years, we’ve managed to turn these amazing talismanic tools into stress-inducing albatrosses. It’s as if scientists had invented a pill that gave us the ability to fly, only to find out that it also gave us dementia.

But there is a way out. I haven’t taken an M.R.I. or undergone a psychiatric evaluation, but I’d bet that something fundamental has shifted inside my brain in the past month. A few weeks ago, the world on my phone seemed more compelling than the offline world — more colorful, faster-moving and with a bigger scope of rewards.

I still love that world, and probably always will. But now, the physical world excites me, too — the one that has room for boredom, idle hands and space for thinking. I no longer feel phantom buzzes in my pocket or have dreams about checking my Twitter replies. I look people in the eye and listen when they talk. I ride the elevator empty-handed. And when I get sucked into my phone, I notice and self-correct.

It’s not a full recovery, and I’ll have to stay vigilant. But for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again.

(Source: NYT)

Dehydrated koala approaches cyclist for help as Australian wildlife suffers in heatwave and fires

‘It walked right up to me ... and climbed up onto my bike while I gave him water,’ says rider 

A dehydrated and confused koala approached a passing cyclist in what appeared to be a call for help, as a heatwave and wild fires continued to grip Australia.

Anna Heuseler was with a group of cyclists heading towards Adelaide in temperatures of up to 40C when they spotted the animal sitting in the middle of the road.

The koala hurried over and drank thirstily when offered a water bottle, even clambering onto Ms Heuseler’s bike to take big gulps.

Sharing the footage on Instagram, she wrote: “This koala walked right up to me as I was descending and climbed up onto my bike while I gave him water. Best thing to happen to me on a ride ever.”

The mid-north coast of New South Wales is one of Australia’s most populous koala habitats, estimated at 15,000-28,000.

But ecologists fear up to a third of those – as many as 9,000 – could have been killed in the fires, according to Sussan Ley, Australia’s environment minister. Those that survived the heat, flames and habitat loss have been left desperately searching for food and water.  

The experts believe 480 million animals could have been killed since the start of the devastating fires in September, which have burnt more than 5 million hectares (12 million acres) and killed eight people.

Ms Heuseler told 7News it was not uncommon to spot koalas out in the bushland, but she had been surprised by this animal’s reaction. “We’ve seen literally hundreds of koalas over the years [but] we have never seen a koala do this.

“We were descending from Norton Summit Road back into the city early this morning and we came around a bend and there was a koala sitting in the middle of the road. Naturally, we stopped because we were going to help relocate him off the road.

“I stopped on my bike and he walked right up to me, quite quickly for a koala, and as I was giving him a drink from all our water bottles, he actually climbed up onto my bike. None of us have ever seen anything like it.”

After giving the animal water, she led it away from the road, back to the scrubland.

The bushfires in the Adelaide Hills have burnt 25,000 hectares of land and left koalas.

Three weeks ago, an ecologist told an official inquiry that thousands of koalas had been killed, and the fires were so large their bodies would probably never be found.

Fires tore through the mid-north coast in November, and further emergency-level blazes have since flared in NSW near Sydney, on the NSW south coast, in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

But even before the bushfire crisis, koala populations in NSW and Queensland had already dropped by 42 per cent between 1990 and 2010, according to the federal threatened species scientific committee, The Guardian reported.

Jane Brister, of Adelaide Koala Rescue, which is caring for 46 rescued koalas, said: “A big problem we’re noticing now is koalas are coming in starving… there’s just no food.

“Part of the problem is there’s often at least four days until someone finds them.”

Thousands of eucalyptus trees – the animals’ staple diet – have been destroyed by fire. 

(Source: Independent)

Domestic violence kills 15 times as many as terrorism in Britain

Police budgets to counter domestic assaults must be ringfenced, say campaigners

Domestic violence kills 15 times as many people in Britain as terrorism, say campaigners who want the police to be given more money to tackle the problem.

The huge disparity is highlighted in figures obtained from official sources by victims’ rights campaigners, who say the police budget for combating domestic violence must be ringfenced, as it is for terrorism.

Official figures show there were 1,870 domestic murders in England and Wales between 2000 and 2018, compared with 126 that were terrorism-related. The vast majority of domestic murder victims were women. In addition, campaigners say an estimated 400 victims of domestic violence a year take their own lives.

“Expenditure on the prevention and detection of domestic violence must be hugely increased now,” said Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s home affairs spokeswoman. “It is shocking and a disgrace that since 2000 over 6,000 – predominantly women – have either been murdered or have taken their own lives following domestic abuse.”

Police forces do not reveal how much they spend on tackling domestic violence. But campaigners say it has been cut in recent years.

Plaid Cymru’s home affairs spokeswoman Liz Saville Roberts says expenditure on the issue must be increased. Photograph: Andrew Price/View Finder

The intelligence and security agencies, charged with combating terrorism have an annual budget of £2.6bn.

“Spending on fighting terrorism has been ringfenced whilst money for women’s support services and for the police has been cut,” said Saville Roberts. “Fifteen times more [people] have been murdered by partners than have lost their lives because of terrorism. It is right that funds for counter terrorism are not cut, but the budget for domestic abuse must increase and be protected as a matter of priority for the next government.”

The call comes amid mounting concern that domestic violence is increasing. Demand for women’s abuse support services rose by 83% in the 10 years up to 2017 while funding fell by almost 50%. The government estimates that domestic violence costs the UK £66bn annually.

On average the police receive an emergency call relating to domestic abuse every 30 seconds. Domestic abuse offences in London rose by 63% between 2011 and 2018, according to figures collated by the mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. At the same time, prosecutions are falling.

Domestic-abuse related cases referred to prosecutors for consideration for charge fell 11% last year despite a surge in the number of crimes recorded by police.

Thousands of alleged perpetrators remain at large, according to campaigners.

“Police funding and support services for victims of domestic abuse have been severely cut since 2010,” said Harry Fletcher, spokesman for the Victims Rights Campaign. “Over the last 18 years 126 people have been killed by terror in England and Wales whilst over 1,800 mainly women have been killed by partners. This is outrageous.

“It is essential that the new government gives priority to preventing and investigating domestic abuse. Budgets must be protected and ringfenced in the future. The police must be given the resources to find and prosecute the thousands of alleged perpetrators who are at large in the community on the police wanted list.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Why is a woman expected to adjust in every phase of her life?

Please adjust. How often do you hear that? At a moment of introspection, I realized that in every woman’s life, there is a transition phase where ends the carefree and innocent childhood and begins the series of adjustments that last her a lifetime. This transition is crudely labelled as adulthood, although it is heavily gendered. During this transition, a woman is torn out of her childhood and forcefully pushed into adulthood. The first periods and a maturing body raises alarms bells as the society begins piling norms on her, no matter if the girl is even mature enough to to put on her buttons correctly. It is from this time that she is made to realise that growing up as a girl means to adjust your clothes, the tone of voice and the way you walk and sit, to put care above career, children over yourself and so on. It is the first stage of training women to live according to patriarchal norms. And it’s often wrapped in two perfectly normal words, Please Adjust. 

RAISING QUESTIONS

• Why are women always expected to adjust?
• Women more than men adjust their careers for family life. Is a woman’s career not as important as of men?
•  Why does marriage become the focal point in a woman’s life?
• Why are men not expected to leave their job and move to where his wife has a settled life?
• How long will patriarchy control the life of women with their invisible hands of “care and safety”?

When the young girl moves towards college and career

Seeking higher education in such a controlling environment also becomes a struggle for women. Firstly, they are encouraged to adjust their expectations and opt for colleges and courses available close to home. Even if they are able to move to other cities, they must ensure to safegaurd their parents’ trust and reputation.

Parents are way too conscious about their daughters that a simple mistake becomes as large as betray of trust.

Nitali Kumari, a first-year medical student from Kolkata says, “Living away from home for studies hits hard not much for the homesickness but the fear that my parents’ trust, which suddenly becomes so fragile, will be betrayed. I never go out with my friends, or agree for a night stay without my parents’ permission.” Parents are way too conscious about their daughters that a simple mistake becomes as large as betray of trust. This conscious behaviour is because society views women as ideally pure and clear of the spots of worldly dust. This also makes them the bearers of family’s respect and reputation.

The vigilance and restrictions are also shared by the landlords of the houses where women stay while away from home. The time restrictions, no male friends allowed, no parties are all because they assume it is their responsibility of taking “care” of the woman as she cannot do it herself. Besides, they will be answerable when anything wrong happens to women. These restrictions make it really difficult for women to live anywhere without being judged by their landlords. All these restrictions that aim at “taking care” of a woman enclose her in a box where she is not even allowed the basic freedom in life. Even if women are allowed the freedom to go out and live on their own, they never really step out of the control of patriarchy and it is sad how the parents themselves become the carriers of patriarchal stereotypes and make sure that their daughters comply with it.

When women are finally able to finish their education and earn a job, the saga of adjustments follows them to the workplace also. She faces discrimination and is expected to adjust because of her gender. Puja Kumari, a Game Developer from Pune, says, “At workplace, a woman is always scaled down based on her gender. Any important task is not assigned to her because it is assumed that she cannot work late and bear the workload. Even if she is as qualified and capable as her male colleague, the important opportunities are handed over to men. Besides, a woman always has to be careful about her male colleagues and how they behave with her. These adjustments make her feel inferior at times and less capable.”

The stage where marriage comes in

While a woman is still adjusting to the patriarchal norms and giving up basic freedom to not upset her parents, she is simultaneously being “trained” for marriage. Why does marriage become a crux of existance in a woman’s life? Even if she is sent for her education, it is bound to a time limit by which she should be married. Many women are not allowed to take up a career that requires long term of education. While others are told to get married and then continue their studies.

 In a subtle way women are told that career isn’t to be their priority in life, over family. Aashima, 21-year-old MA English student at DU says, “Being the first child of my parents, I am a target for the entire society. I am often told that I am the ‘honour’ of my family and that I should soon get married. The idea itself of getting married at such an early stage is disturbing not only for me but for every woman.”

I wanted to study law and become a criminal lawyer. But when I asked my father to enroll me in for the course, he denied. He said that society does not consider the profession safe for women and a woman from a law background is not considered fit for marriage. – Sushma Buswal

Marital prospects also becomes a factor of deciding which career a woman should opt for so that her in-laws would not frown upon her and she has a good married life. It is unbelievable how marriage makes the decisions in life that a woman should get the agency to make, based on her aspirations. Sushma Buswal, 21-year-old MA English student at DU says, “I wanted to study law and become a criminal lawyer. But when I asked my father to enroll me in for the course, he denied. He said that society does not consider the profession safe for women and a woman from a law background is not considered fit for marriage. He asked me to reconsider my choice and it was then that much more than an adjustment, I lost myself.”

Even after marriage a woman has to adjust her work-life so that she can manage both marriage and work together.  Often she has to leave her previous job and migrate to the place where her husband has a settled life. Moving to a new place, leaving a well-settled job is what everyone hates to do. It is difficult to start over again, look for a job and adjust in a new place. But for a marriage to work out, one of the two has to sacrifice and move. But, why the onus of the sacrifices is always on women?

Puja Kumari, Game Developer, said, “To get married I had to give up my job in Pune where I was working since the last three years. It is unthinkable to leave a well-settled job and pay, and move to a city and start everything from scratch. But  a duty that I have to perform no matter what. Besides, from the experience of my sisters, I am quite sure that I will need a backup plan for my career because managing my work and  child together will not be easy. I can’t abandon my child but leaving my career is equally a nightmare”

When she becomes a mother

Many women have to give up their job once they embrace motherhood because first, the responsibility of the child is mostly on them and second, many firms do not have the right maternal leave policies. It is important that the child is brought up by parents and that’s why keeping the work aside becomes inevitable. But, this should not be a difficult choice to make. The firms, along with employing more women, should frame friendly policies for maternal and menstrual leaves. Relatives and partners can also help working women by step in as caregivers, instead of expecting them to bear the duties solely by themselves. If the society and families join forces then women then will be able to manage motherhood and their careers well and not settle for some back-up plans.

It is easy to tell women to adjust for the society as it still sides with men as the superior gender, shielding them from any change in mindset., However, many men are now embracing feminism to be better fathers, brothers and partners. Women themselves too have stopped internalising gendered social norms and are now questioning them. Hopefully, they won’t have to adjust in every aspect of their lives for sake of security and appeasement in the future.

(Source: She the People TV)