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People keep finding late loved ones on Google Maps

For years, Google Maps has offered Street View, which stitches together panoramic camera images to recreate a digital facsimile of physical spaces in the real world that you can explore online. Some people are discovering that if they scroll through the platform long enough and <a href="https://blog.google/products/maps/go-back-in-time-with-street-view/">use a time travel feature</a>, they just might find the image of a late loved one captured by one of Google’s cameras — and seemingly saved in Google Maps forever.
In the past few days, several posts announcing these discoveries have gone viral. One from UK-based writer Sherri Turner has already racked up tens of thousands of “Likes” on Twitter. A similar tweet from an <a href="https://twitter.com/fesshole/status/1405169551092948994">anonymous confessions account</a> also attracted attention from not only other Twitter users but also major <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57511055">media</a> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/google-maps-street-view-captures-image-late-family-members-fesshole-tweets-1601606">outlets</a>. The tweets have turned into threads where others share stories of looking for their deceased relatives in Google Maps.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I look at my mum’s old house on Google maps street view, the house where I grew up. It says ‘Image captured May 2009’. There is a light on in her bedroom. It is still her house, she is still alive, I am still visiting every few months on the train to Bodmin Parkway,
— Sherri Turner (@STurner4077) <a href="https://twitter.com/STurner4077/status/1405152351112077317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2021</a></blockquote>
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This is hardly the first time people have used the time travel feature in Street View to go searching for the departed on Google Maps — or to share the experience on social media. Google released Street View in 2007, and these types of viral Twitter posts have been happening <a href="https://twitter.com/r13639/status/392432114991239168">since at least 2013</a>. The trend points to an enduring pattern of Google forging ahead in its endless quest to map the entire world (Street View currently includes 87 countries) and constantly update that data. Somewhere along the way, Google Maps users are realizing this process has unintended consequences.
This effect suggests that the creation of these 360-degree views of the world requires momentary surveillance. Google Maps uses lots and lots of cameras to create the immersive experience that Street View offers. Google says the <a href="https://www.google.com/streetview/">digital recreation of the physical world</a> is powered by millions of cameras that capture multiple angles, <a href="https://www.google.com/earth/education/tools/street-view/">collected</a> by people “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FZH652qYkA">driving</a>, pedaling, sailing, and walking around and capturing imagery.” The company has also moved to allow users to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/03/google-now-lets-anyone-contribute-to-street-view-using-ar-and-an-app/">submit their own images to supplement its own Street View</a>. While helping people remember dead family members isn’t really the intended purpose of Google Maps, a spokesperson told Recode it was “heartwarming” people were using the platform in this way.
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<figcaption>The time travel feature in Street View lets you compare present images to images that were captured as far back as 2007.</figcaption>
<cite>Google Maps</cite></figure>
Turner, the writer, told Recode she discovered the time travel feature in Street View earlier this week, when she was trying to see what a house that belonged to her late mother, who passed away nearly four years ago, looked like now. She ended up finding that the last available image on Street View was from 2009. It showed the house with a light on, which told Turner that her mother was home when the image was captured. “That makes it a little bit more something that you feel like you’ve stumbled across rather than something you’ve made happen,” she told Recode.
Again, people have been discovering images of late loved ones on Street View for a while. It was even happening <a href="https://imgur.com/gallery/rZMM5o5">before Google introduced the time travel feature</a>. The phenomenon also drove a <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/google-street-view-deceased-loved-ones.html">whole</a> <a href="https://onezero.medium.com/searching-for-the-dead-in-google-street-view-d3cbb117f4fa">news cycle</a> last year, when one Twitter user said she’d found an image of her late grandfather on Street View. The tweet generated more than 400,000 “Likes.”
But there’s more to the story than viral content. The images are a reminder that many people who show up in Street View don’t know their pictures are being taken, and the deceased have no say in whether or not their image remains on the service.
More broadly, tech companies like Google hold much of the power over this sensitive and personal data, and citizens haven’t had a real role in setting norms for how data associated with decreased people ought to be handled. That’s especially important because Google’s approach to this data may not match up with the religious and cultural norms surrounding death practiced by many of its users across the world.
“Increasingly, the majority of our online users are going to come from global south countries,” <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/3183331">Faheem Hussain</a>, a professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, told Recode. “What we are increasingly seeing is the absence of [the] participation of the people in that design.”
Late family members aren’t the only surprising finds on Google Maps. There are entire <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/streetview/">online</a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/googlemapsshenanigans/">communities</a> devoted to exploring the mapping platform for unusual things, identifying everything from wild animals to sandstorms. There’s also a much darker side of the apparent omnipresence of Street View and Google Maps more broadly, one that raises myriad concerns about <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/woman-sues-google-exposing-her-underwear-street-view-flna125876">peoples’ privacy</a>. Back in 2013, for example, a father in California had to ask Google to remove <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/catesevilla/man-says-the-body-of-his-dead-son-can-be-see-on-google-maps">an aerial image of his son’s dead body</a>. Google says it has systems in place for blurring out personally identifying information from passersby and license plates in the photos it takes. But clearly, some people can still be identified if a family member knows what they’re looking for.
The enduring trend of finding lost loved ones inevitably serves as a reminder that Google plays a major role in documenting our daily lives over time. There’s no sign that the digital artifacts being preserved in Street View are going to go away anytime soon. Instead, they might just become part of how history is recorded in a process that we don’t necessarily have control over.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22539126/google-street-view-maps-dead-relatives">https://www.vox.com/recode/22539126/google-street-view-maps-dead-relatives</a>

vox People keep finding late loved ones on Google Maps

For years, Google Maps has offered Street View, which stitches together panoramic camera images to recreate a digital facsimile of physical ...

Iran has a new president. He could end up being much more than that.

He’s a hardliner and staunch critic of the West, but he’s not expected to fundamentally change Iran’s policy toward the US. He’s loyal to the supreme leader, but he may soon replace him. And he’s just been imbued with substantial power, but he’ll mostly use it to do his boss’s bidding.
That’s what the world can expect from new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who <a href="https://twitter.com/hrome2/status/1406238239426494466?s=20">won the country’s presidential election on Friday</a> — a contest that was heavily rigged in Raisi’s favor — with extremely low voter turnout.
Raisi is an ultraconservative judge currently serving as head of the country’s judiciary. He’s long faced allegations of involvement in severe human rights abuses, including the <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/06/who-ebrahim-raisi-front-runner-irans-presidential-race">mass execution of thousands of prisoners</a>, mostly political dissidents and protesters — activities for which Raisi was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/front-runner-iran-presidency-is-hardline-judge-sanctioned-by-us-2021-06-15/">sanctioned by the Trump administration in 2019</a>.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Final <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/IranElections?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#IranElections</a> numbers are in:
*Raisi received 17.9m votes (61.9%), followed by spoiled ballots, Rezaei, Hemmati, Ghazisadeh
*Turnout at 48.8%, lowest in pres election history. As with parl. vote, state not bothering to tweak the numbers to cross the "lowest" threshold. <a href="https://t.co/PwlfRzXRAp">https://t.co/PwlfRzXRAp</a>
— Henry Rome (@hrome2) <a href="https://twitter.com/hrome2/status/1406238239426494466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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As president, Raisi will face several daunting challenges. He’ll have to negotiate America’s reentry into the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States. He’ll have to address both the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/these-6-charts-show-how-sanctions-are-crushing-irans-economy.html">sharp economic downturn</a> and the <a href="https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/iran/">coronavirus pandemic</a> plaguing his nation. And he may have to oversee the succession of 82-year-old <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55257059">Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei</a> — Iran’s first real power change in over 30 years.
Experts say Khamenei orchestrated Raisi’s election victory, mainly by <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210525-iran-bars-heavyweights-ahmadinejad-and-larijani-from-presidential-elections">barring strong challengers from competing against him</a>, to ensure the supreme leader’s <a href="http://english.khamenei.ir/news/6723/The-youth-can-bring-about-a-major-evolution-in-the-country-s">vision for Iran</a> far outlives him.
“Khamenei wants someone who sees the world the way he sees the world,” said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, DC. As a former <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/5/ebrahim-raisi-the-cleric-who-could-end-iranian-hopes-for-change">student of Khamenei’s</a> who was appointed to every major job he held by his mentor, Raisi is a safe bet to assure the supreme leader’s legacy.
But there are still open questions about what Raisi’s ascent to the presidency will mean for the future. One is how a hardliner will govern as president, especially now that his ilk will control all <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/islamic-republics-power-centers">major branches of Iran’s government</a>. Experts predict the country will become more repressive internally and continue its combative foreign policy. “They still won’t trust the United States,” said Holly Dagres, a UK-based fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.
The other, arguably bigger question is whether Raisi’s rise to the presidency makes him the clear <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/for-ebrahim-raisi-irans-presidency-is-a-step-toward-supreme-leader/">frontrunner to replace Khamenei</a> when the aging leader dies. If that’s the case, then how the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/ebrahim-raisi-iran-presidential-election-2021/">60-year-old</a> Raisi governs could offer clues to how he might lead Iran for decades to come. The money is on Raisi following in his mentor’s footsteps.
“Raisi owes everything he has to Khamenei,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director.
Weeks before the June 18 presidential election, it was clear that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/middleeast/iran-election-khamenei-raisi.html">Iran’s leadership wanted Raisi to win</a>.
The regime allows only those deemed loyal enough to the supreme leader to run for president, but it also likes leaving a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the election. This time, though, Khamenei and the 12-person Guardian Council responsible for approving candidates openly removed that veneer. They disqualified anyone who could possibly challenge Raisi, effectively guaranteeing his victory — perhaps seen as a necessary move after Raisi surprisingly <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39984066">lost in 2017 to current President Hassan Rouhani</a>.
The move was so blatant that even the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/5/16/11682458/iran-revolutionary-guards">Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps</a>, the elite security and military organization responsible for the protection and survival of the regime, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/middleeast/iran-election-khamenei-raisi.html">called the election undemocratic</a>.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1624121656_2208_35472" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22665484,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KPIDDEzYDD_mxcbjXqfBTQjWbBE=/0x0:3114x2076/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/r0N7rJWRa95r9SvSajdXRv0DVVg=/0x0:3114x2076/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8-ooYu9Xyej9YP8Yvi2jgC6jyNc=/0x0:3114x2076/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_2bV9CeKKFBRYu-ASgPR2Md_Aog=/0x0:3114x2076/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DBo-zyLb5WTQ3BFOOA_dPJnS0HQ=/0x0:3114x2076/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Yyl8O1kZVkcvvZ6aojZgWuQcz1c=/0x0:3114x2076/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-rJ533mKODGwrdbMi7P7TJCHsGU=/0x0:3114x2076/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PRjXxr7_ac6jIi63Npxc9SlHpbc=/0x0:3114x2076/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oZOqV3TB7QVIErjCbMHj_8Io48I=/0x0:3114x2076/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3114" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O0TW2KMHXrToyndi6obaic9X3a0=/0x0:3114x2076/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kmyhx3B-cHl6EEwlNt-zrm9aaY0=/0x0:3114x2076/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vf7gBqY3xrlHI3277y3CBT2gbmQ=/0x0:3114x2076/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yC7cyGGW__8MTkQIv765iR2oHPY=/0x0:3114x2076/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ECkXwiY777vnfjz2B8PR4jopnyU=/0x0:3114x2076/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3g10h-PFeVDUoHVT9i-x9Ze6Xk8=/0x0:3114x2076/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZyPIagUHOiFFMG7NN4VVZqlnFfc=/0x0:3114x2076/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0xr3HBgjWIm50367g4IwQYjFENU=/0x0:3114x2076/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O949Bketudp16tP7pyQ01iibt-k=/0x0:3114x2076/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sjVebbaWK6mPF4dd83_8IGZzrjo=/0x0:3114x2076/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3114x2076):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665484/1324020949.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi in Tabriz, Iran, on June 16.</figcaption>
<cite>Meghdad Madadi/ATPImages/Getty Images</cite></figure>
A look at <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/5/ebrahim-raisi-the-cleric-who-could-end-iranian-hopes-for-change">Raisi’s</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/ebrahim-raisi-iran-presidential-election-2021/">past</a> makes clear why the regime would go to such lengths to make him the new president.
He was born in Mashhad in Iran’s northeast, the same city Khamenei hails from, and can trace his lineage back to the Islamic Prophet Mohammed (which allows him to wear a black turban). Born to a clerical family, he <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ebrahim-Raisi">received a religious education and achieved the status of a low-level cleric</a>, but he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/ebrahim-raisi-iran-presidential-election-2021/">never reached the status of ayatollah</a>, the highest rank of Twelver Shia clergy in Iran.
Raisi instead joined Iran’s judiciary in 1981 and only four years later became deputy prosecutor general in Tehran, the capital. It was in that role in 1988, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, that <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/08/iran-still-seeks-erase-prison-massacre-memories-years/">Amnesty International</a> alleges Raisi was associated with the extrajudicial killings of political prisoners. “Between 4,500 and 5,000 men, women and children were killed in the summer of 1988 in prisons across Iran,” the human rights group wrote in 2013. (Raisi’s defenders <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/front-runner-iran-presidency-is-hardline-judge-sanctioned-by-us-2021-06-15/">deny</a> his involvement.)
Raisi continued to climb Iran’s power ladder, helped largely by Khamenei’s appointment in 1989 as supreme leader. Among other positions, Raisi went on to become the prosecutor general of Tehran in 1989, the first deputy chief justice of Iran in 2004, and the country’s attorney general in 2014.
In the last five years, Raisi became one of the nation’s leading regime figures. In 2016, Khamenei named him head of the powerful <a href="https://globe.razavi.ir/">Astan Quds Razavi</a> foundation, a supposed charitable group that manages the important Imam Reza shrine and other institutions. (The Trump administration in January <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1234">sanctioned</a> the foundation for its immense wealth and close ties to the supreme leader.)
Then in 2019, Khamenei gave Raisi the reins of Iran’s judiciary, where he used his perch to ostensibly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/ebrahim-raisi-iran-presidential-election-2021/">tackle corruption</a>, though some say he mainly targeted his political opponents. That same year, Raisi was elected vice president of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which — interestingly enough — will choose the next supreme leader after Khamenei dies.
Such an inexorable rise could only end up with Raisi as Iran’s president, which will make him arguably Iran’s second most powerful official after Khamenei himself. But what precisely he’ll do with that power isn’t entirely clear.
Raisi hasn’t offered up much of a platform during the election, partly because he hasn’t really needed to craft a winning message, what with the election having already been in his favor.
But experts note that he’s long been ultraconservative on domestic issues, such as on stamping out political dissent and women’s rights, and on foreign policy he remains extremely critical of the West.
However, the potential good news for the Biden administration is that Raisi has shown a willingness to abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which restricted Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
“Let’s make it clear. We would definitely abide by the [deal] in the format that was approved with nine clauses by the supreme leader, as it a contract and a commitment that governments must abide by,” Raisi said during a <a href="https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1400/03/22/2519308/">June 12 debate</a>.
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<figcaption>Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei speaks during his meeting with students in Tehran, Iran, on October 18, 2017.</figcaption>
<cite>Iranian Leader’s Press Office/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</cite></figure>
He even attacked one of the other candidates as well as the current Rouhani government by saying only he could keep the agreement intact. “Gentlemen, you cannot implement the JCPOA,” Raisi said, using the acronym for the deal’s official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “The JCPOA must be implemented by a powerful government. Foreign power is an extension of internal power.”
It seems contradictory that Raisi would consistently rail against the West but also want the nuclear accord to survive. But experts says the cleric’s stance makes sense: Khamenei had allowed the initial agreement to happen, and the lifting of sanctions would greatly help the struggling economy.
Ultimately, though, analysts told me Raisi’s main job will be to help Khamenei realize his vision of a <a href="https://english.khamenei.ir/news/6723/The-youth-can-bring-about-a-major-evolution-in-the-country-s">second Islamic Revolution</a>, one led by the nation’s youth. Many of the nation’s leading clerics are 70 or older, and it has been over 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khamenei wants changes made to Iran’s government to foment a continued feeling of revolution among the next generation of Iranians.
To do that, the International Crisis Group’s Vaez says, Khamenei may change the government from a presidential to parliamentary system, removing a key source of friction between the offices of the president and supreme leader, and making it easier to pass reforms through government on party lines. Raisi likely won’t put up much of a fight during such shifts, and he’ll have few qualms about quashing dissent from the public or the government.
“Through this election, [Khamenei] wants to get a pliant president along with a pliant parliament so that he doesn’t have any resistance to internal changes,” Vaez told me.
By effectively handpicking Raisi, Khamenei aims to ensure his legacy and influence is lasting. “He’s thinking about after he’s gone, and this is how he’s doing it,” said the Atlantic Council’s Dagres.
So is Raisi fine with just being Khamenei’s puppet? Not quite, experts told me. Rather, it’s basically a trade: Raisi will do Khamenei’s bidding now, so that when the time comes to select a new supreme leader, Raisi is the odds-on favorite.
What Raisi’s election as president really means, then, is the arrival of a major new figure on the world stage. This is Raisi’s test before potentially taking the reins of Iran, and few believe he’ll throw away his shot. “Something big is happening in Iran,” Dagres told me.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/6/19/22536629/iran-election-ebrahim-raisi-supreme-leader-khamenei">https://www.vox.com/2021/6/19/22536629/iran-election-ebrahim-raisi-supreme-leader-khamenei</a>

vox Iran has a new president. He could end up being much more than that.

He’s a hardliner and staunch critic of the West, but he’s not expected to fundamentally change Iran’s policy toward the US. He’s loyal to th...

Lockdown was not a sabbatical

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1f4GynMwDoplYAVTzJHVxCmW2qE=/0x181:2500x1490/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22665570/GettyImages_1280436047.jpg" /></div>
Did you become a better person during the pandemic?
It’s a question many of us are being asked, in ways large and small, as more people get vaccinated, restrictions lift, and public life starts to return to some semblance of normal.
Sometimes the question is explicit, like when a job interviewer asks if you used lockdown to <a href="https://twitter.com/Mr_Considerate/status/1402245120070664193">pursue “passion projects.”</a> More often it’s implicit, present in stories about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/well/family/curate-friends.html">how to rearrange your “friendscape”</a> after the pandemic or <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/15-personal-finance-lessons-we-can-all-learn-from-the-year-of-covid-19-11611493201">personal finance lessons</a> to learn from the last year.
But overall, as our second pandemic spring turns into our second pandemic summer, there’s a certain pressure to have learned or grown as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, even if it’s still going on. The pressure is part of a larger tendency in American culture, some say. “When we’ve been through a traumatic experience, a lot of people try to rush to make meaning of that,” Joy Harden Bradford, a psychologist and host of the podcast Therapy for Black Girls, told Vox.
It’s also just the latest iteration of a narrative that’s been around since the beginning of the pandemic: that people should be using their quarantine time productively, whether that meant learning a new language, writing a play, or even starting a business. That narrative has always ignored the reality of pandemic life, during which many people did not have the luxury of staying home, and even those who did were often too anxious to pursue personal growth. “The pandemic has been hard for people,” David Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology at Boston College and the author of the book The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty, told Vox. “It hasn’t been like a staycation.”
But the narrative that we should have learned and grown over the past year — potentially transforming ourselves into better workers for our employers — persists, and with it damaging expectations for how people process pain and trauma. If anything, some say, what we should learn from this year is to give ourselves and others space to heal in our own ways. Sometimes, “the lesson is that I survived,” Bradford said. “If that is all you took out of this, then really, that should be enough.”
The pressure to be productive started almost as soon as the pandemic did. Time-consuming hobbies like <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2020/5/19/21221008/how-to-bake-bread-pandemic-yeast-flour-baking-ken-forkish-claire-saffitz">baking sourdough bread</a> became popular. Viral tweets told us that <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/4/17/21201878/quarantine-productivity-social-distancing-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-19-capitalism-ep-thompson">Shakespeare wrote King Lear</a> while quarantined during a plague epidemic. Someone came up with the word <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriscarosa/2020/03/14/use-your-self-quarantine-time-to-become-a-coronapreneur/?sh=1bafed846fe2">“coronapreneur.”</a>
The idea was that people — especially those lucky enough to be able to shelter in place during the pandemic — were supposed to be using this so-called free time to better themselves. The implication, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/4/17/21201878/quarantine-productivity-social-distancing-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-19-capitalism-ep-thompson">Vox’s Constance Grady wrote</a> in April 2020, was: “Shouldn’t you be using this time to become more productive? Shouldn’t you be buckling down and writing a masterpiece or inventing a genre or discovering fundamental laws of the universe?”
Inevitably, there was backlash, with many people questioning whether an unprecedented public health emergency was, in fact, an ideal opportunity for self-improvement. “For many, this is neither a hygge snow day nor an extended vacation,” Michelle Ruiz <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/i-dont-need-a-hobby">wrote at Vogue</a> last spring. “It’s a crisis.”
But the attitude persisted, with one hobby trend giving way to another (<a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/tie-dye-fashion-pandemic-blues-dior-proenza-schouler-acne-studios-1234803128/">tie-dye!</a>) and seemingly everyone offering <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/productivity-tips-for-procrastinators-11610976600">pandemic productivity tips</a>. And now it’s summer 2021, and at least in the US and Europe, vaccinations are up and cases are down. People are starting to use the phrase <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/opinion/vaccination-pandemic-world.html">“post-pandemic”</a> — even though the pandemic continues to rage around the world and unvaccinated people remain at risk. And the productivity discourse might be starting to shift slightly, toward the idea that the pandemic should have been a learning experience, helping us optimize our skills, our lives, and ourselves for post-pandemic living.
Take <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/well/family/curate-friends.html">a recent New York Times story</a> on how to manage friendships in a post-pandemic world. “The pandemic shook us out of our social ruts, and now we have an opportunity to choose which relationships we wish to resurrect and which are better left dormant,” Kate Murphy wrote. “Ask yourself: ‘Who did I miss?’ and ‘Who missed me?’”
The story was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/new-york-times-friendscape-obese-depressed-b1859966.html">widely criticized</a>, with many taking it to imply that perhaps overweight or depressed friends shouldn’t make the cut: “depressed friends make it more likely you’ll be depressed, obese friends make it more likely you’ll become obese, and friends who smoke or drink a lot make it more likely you’ll do the same,” Murphy wrote in an original version. (The Times later edited the story and issued a note saying that references to studies of obesity and depression “lacked sufficient context and attribution and did not adequately convey their relevance to the issues discussed in the article”).
But the attitude that the pandemic should propel us toward better, smarter living isn’t confined to one how-to piece. With a quick search, you can find lessons from the last 15 months to help you with <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/15-personal-finance-lessons-we-can-all-learn-from-the-year-of-covid-19-11611493201">personal finance</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/covid-19-pandemic-investing-lessons/">investing</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhettpower/2021/03/21/one-year-later-lasting-leadership-lessons-from-the-pandemic/?sh=6ef50a3f254b">leadership</a>, and more. And at least in some cases, employers seem to be embracing the idea of quarantine self-improvement plans.
“I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I’ve just been asked in a job interview if I used lockdown ‘to pursue any passion projects or personal development,’” Niall Anderson, who works at a university in Dublin, <a href="https://twitter.com/Mr_Considerate/status/1402245120070664193">tweeted earlier this month</a>. “The market really does want us all to think we’ve just had a generous sabbatical.”
His tweet quickly went viral, generating thousands of replies. Most, he told Vox in an email, expressed “comic incredulity,” while “a few Rise & Grind types showed up to say the question was entirely fair, as did — more worryingly — a few HR types.” The responses that struck Anderson the most, however, were the hundreds who said they’d been asked the same question.
“One of the reasons I tweeted about it in the first place was that it felt like such a grim novelty,” Anderson said: “I hadn’t seriously considered that it could be widespread.”
It’s not clear how much the question Anderson encountered represents employer expectations more broadly. “There are always outlier employers who will ask all sorts of weird or inappropriate stuff — and those, of course, are the ones you’re most likely to hear about,” Alison Green, author of the work advice column <a href="https://www.askamanager.org/">Ask a Manager</a>, told Vox in an email.
But there’s a larger norm at work behind questions like this, and behind the greater expectation that people could use lockdown to boost their coronapreneurial profiles. An obsessive focus on productivity is “part of late-stage American capitalism,” Blustein said. “This productivity ethos has gotten transported into our hobbies, it’s gotten transported into our relationships, into our physical and mental health.”
And it’s not just about productivity. The pandemic has intensified a pressure to internalize the demand for constant work, with people striving to use their time in marketable ways, even if no boss is telling them to do so. Anderson sees the question about quarantine “passion projects” as a symptom of “the universalization of the concept of management altogether, whereby everyone is encouraged to think of themselves as ‘CEO of Myself.’” Indeed, much pandemic productivity discourse has centered not on getting things done because your employer makes you, but on getting things done because you make you.
In a viral tweet last April, for example, marketing CEO Jeremy Haynes argued that if you didn’t use lockdown to learn new skills or start a business, “you didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.”
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:
1.) a new skill 
2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business 
3.) more knowledge
You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline
— Jeremy Haynes (@TheJeremyHaynes) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheJeremyHaynes/status/1245767684484202496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 2, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The implication was that people should use the supposed extra time provided by quarantine to squeeze additional labor out of themselves, doing the work of capitalism without even being asked to do so. We’re so used to treating our time — our very selves — as a resource for the market that we do so even during a global crisis. And when a boss isn’t buying our time — when it’s allegedly “free” — we’re supposed to figure out a way to sell it on our own.
“I’ve been working with young people on the cusp of adulthood for the past two years, and the problems they’ve brought my way have all tended to revolve around perceived failures to be their own CEO,” Anderson said.
And now, on top of those pressures, we’re supposed to be our own CEOs during a pandemic, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/600000-us-covid-deaths.html">more than 600,000 people have died</a> in the US alone, and many more have been sickened, bereaved, or had their lives disrupted by the virus. For people who lost a loved one, and for health care workers and other essential workers who have been working under dangerous conditions, the pandemic has been a source of very real trauma. That’s especially true for Black, Latinx, and other people of color whose communities have seen the biggest impact from the pandemic and from the economic crisis, and who have been overrepresented among essential workers. “A lot of the lives that were lost were Black and brown people,” Bradford said. “Our communities have really been hit hardest.”
Meanwhile, even for those who’ve been able to work from home, the pandemic has not necessarily been a source of endless free time to pursue personal projects. For starters, there are the many parents who picked up additional child care responsibilities when schools and day cares closed their doors — often on top of working or looking for work (as of last fall, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/03/17/the-pandemic-has-highlighted-many-challenges-for-mothers-but-they-arent-necessarily-new/">65 percent of remote-working parents</a> said they also had child care responsibilities while they were working, with a majority of moms saying those responsibilities were difficult to handle). Then there were the changes in daily life, from the closure of offices to the isolation of social distancing to the fear injected into once-ordinary tasks like grocery shopping.
“A transition is a source of anxiety for everyone,” Jessi Gold, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told Vox. And “we’ve just had a year of transition upon transition.”
You don’t have to look hard to find tips on how to turn <a href="https://katu.com/afternoon-live/books-authors/harness-that-nervous-energy-to-live-a-more-productive-life">even your anxiety</a> into productivity. But for most people, stress just makes it that much harder — and slower — to get things done. As Blustein put it, “managing anxiety is time-consuming.”
Even though more than half of Americans have now received at least their first vaccination and some states have fully reopened — New York celebrated with <a href="https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/coronavirus/2021/06/16/fireworks-in-nyc-new-york-harbor-nyc-covid-70-percent-partial-vaccination-celebration">surprise fireworks</a> — that doesn’t mean the stress and worry are gone. Patients are still coming in with high levels of anxiety, as well as difficulty concentrating, Gold said. Throughout the pandemic, she added, “I’ve never had so many people who used to be on meds come back and ask for meds.”
Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/huge-disparities-in-vaccination-rates-are-creating-islands-of-vulnerability-across-the-country/2021/06/14/226fbdb2-cd3e-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html">more than a third of eligible Americans</a> remain unvaccinated, and racial disparities persist, with Black and Latinx Americans less likely to be vaccinated than white people. And billions of people around the world remain at risk — in many low-income countries, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covax-effort-to-vaccinate-the-world-is-faltering/">fewer than 1 percent</a> of people have been vaccinated.
The pandemic isn’t over, its psychological effects certainly aren’t over, and it’s too soon, many say, to expect us to translate the pain of the last year into tidy lessons for the future. “There really hasn’t been enough distance,” Bradford said. “Sometimes when you rush to make meaning too quickly, you haven’t given yourself time to really sit with the feelings.”
“As a society, we don’t do well with grief, and processing what it means to have lost so many people,” Bradford added. Moreover, “we live in a culture where, for some reason, the goal is happiness” rather than sometimes being okay with just existing, Gold said. “We always need to be striving for the silver lining of everything.”
For people who want to, there’s nothing wrong with trying to reframe their experience of the pandemic in a positive light. That can be a coping mechanism for some people, Gold said. So can things like baking bread or taking up a new hobby. “Some of that has been people’s attempts to manage their own anxiety,” Bradford said. “It feels like, ‘oh, my gosh, the world is falling apart, I’m not in control of anything. Let me control the things I have control over.’”
The problem comes when we face pressure — from friends, from prospective employers, or even just from a culture that expects every experience to be somehow productive — to swiftly transform the pandemic into an opportunity for learning or growth. “There’s nothing you’re supposed to get out of this,” Gold said. “If what you get out of this is, like, you’re breathing, congratulations.”
For those who don’t yet feel ready to find silver linings in the pandemic, the good news is that the last year has also intensified the backlash against productivity pressure and the drive to self-improvement. Throughout the pandemic, young people, especially, “have resisted this kind of push to work and be productive,” Blustein said, instead trying to “enjoy the moment and find things that are meaningful in their lives.”
Whether it’s people <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/return-to-office-employees-are-quitting-instead-of-giving-up-work-from-home">quitting their jobs</a> rather than going back to the office or <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/12/15/covid-unifies-america-emotional-priorities-shift-2020-column/6540239002/">shifting their priorities</a> away from career advancement, there’s evidence that the pandemic is causing some people to rethink their relationship to capitalism and American work culture. Now the question is whether this shift will be enduring and broad-based, supported by policies to create <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22308547/pandemic-anniversary-labor-works-intimacy-how-to-do-nothing">protections for workers</a> and a true social safety net, rather than something confined to those privileged enough to have choices.
That, perhaps, would be a real silver lining — though one it never should have taken a pandemic to achieve.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22536756/covid-pandemic-quarantine-lockdown-productivity-hobbies-work">https://www.vox.com/22536756/covid-pandemic-quarantine-lockdown-productivity-hobbies-work</a>

vox Lockdown was not a sabbatical

Did you become a better person during the pandemic? It’s a question many of us are being asked, in ways large and small, as more people ge...

The biggest problem with eating insects isn’t the “ew” factor

When I was in college, a girl who lived in my dorm was an evangelist for an unlikely cause: the potential of insects as food. She was really, really passionate about bugs as an ethical, environmentally friendly source of protein, in the way that driven undergrads can be really, really passionate about quixotic causes.
At the time I laughed it off. They’re bugs! No one will want to eat bugs, right? The joke was on me: A few years later, she and her business partner <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2izWyNnKSg">went on Shark Tank</a> and received a $100,000 investment from Mark Cuban, and now her company, <a href="https://eatchirps.com/">Chirps Chips</a>, sells cricket-based chips around the world.
My classmate was ahead of the curve. As humans gradually realize we need to cut back on traditional meat consumption for the sake of the planet, <a href="https://time.com/5942290/eat-insects-save-planet/">eating bugs</a> — primarily crickets and mealworms — has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/science/eating-insects-entomophagy.html">become a buzzy, green</a> alternative.
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Some cultures, encompassing some 2 billion people around the world, <a href="https://theconversation.com/eating-insects-has-long-made-sense-in-africa-the-world-must-catch-up-70419">already eat bugs</a>. Mopane worms and shea caterpillars are <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-32952-5_3">routinely farmed and eaten</a> (the former in South Africa and Zimbabwe, the latter in Burkina Faso and Mali), as is the African edible bush-cricket, which is commonly consumed in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Madagascar. <a href="https://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/10.3920/JIFF2014.0017">Wild insect gathering for food for either subsistence or sale</a> is common throughout East Asia and the Pacific, from India to Indonesia to Japan to Australia. In the northwest Amazon region of South America, somewhere <a href="https://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/abs/10.3920/JIFF2014.0015">between 5 and 7 percent of total protein</a> comes from insects.
But proponents of insect farming are looking to further industrialize the practice to raise more insects as feed for farmed animals as well as for human consumption — mostly in Europe and the US, where the practice is less common. In May, a European Union panel voted to <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/novel_food/authorisations/approval-first-insect-novel-food_en">approve the sale of an insect-based food</a> for humans for the first time in the union’s history. The French company Agronutris had put in the application to sell dried yellow mealworm, a maggot-like organism “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/yellow-mealworm-safe-for-humans-to-eat-says-eu-food-safety-agency">said to taste a lot like peanuts</a>” when dried; with EU regulatory approval, the company hopes to sell the mealworm as a flour-like powder.
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<figcaption>An employee loads mealworm larvae into a sorting oven inside the Ynsect insect farm in Dole, France.</figcaption>
<cite>Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Insect farming may still be a niche industry, but <a href="https://www.bugburger.se/foretag/the-eating-insects-startups-here-is-the-list-of-entopreneurs-around-the-world/">dozens of startups</a> have come on the scene over the last few years. (And two French startups received <a href="https://mailchi.mp/0d9c51072475/the-promise-and-perils-of-insect-farming">a combined $537 million in funding</a> in just the last year.) Meanwhile, chefs in the US are embracing cicadas, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22385700/brood-x-cicadas-birds-forest-ecosystem">trillions of which have emerged</a> on the East Coast, as a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/eating-cicadas-brood-x/">potential ingredient</a>. <a href="https://www.vox.com/22445929/dogs-eating-cicadas-brood-x-fish-bait-birds">Dogs are already enjoying the bounty</a> of Brood X, the current crop of cicadas, but there’s no health or safety reason for why humans couldn’t join in.
This excitement is eminently understandable: Insects are nutritious and environmentally sound to produce, which makes them a compelling alternative to traditional factory-farmed meats. But setting aside people’s personal tastes, I’m still wary of the push to eat bugs, largely because of one unanswered question: Do we really know all we need to know about the lives of insects — and whether they’re worthy of moral consideration?
The case for eating bugs is straightforward: They’re healthy, and doing so is good for the environment. A <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf06c">study</a> published in May from researchers at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin-Madison summarizes both arguments well.
The authors found that if consumers in Africa and Asia added 5 grams of insect food to their daily diets, 67 million fewer people would be at risk of protein deficiency, with 166 million fewer people at risk of zinc deficiency and 251 million fewer people at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency. Anemia would also fall considerably.
The study notes that 5 grams is not that much in the grand scheme of things. Cricket protein companies often cite a serving size of 10 to 20 grams of cricket protein powder for use in smoothies or porridge and the like. A 5-gram requirement could be met by one of those meals every two to four days.
Particularly in areas of the world where nutritional shortfalls are common, insects could fill a useful role.
Then there’s the environmental side. Factory farms are an environmental disaster. <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21363864/beef-climate-change-brazil-amazon-rainforest-pecsa">Beef farming</a> specifically produces a huge share of the world’s methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than ordinary carbon dioxide, and drives deforestation in the Amazon as beef companies seek more open land for grazing. But <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers-factory-farms-cafos-animal-rights-booker-warren-khanna">factory farms of all kinds have environmental costs</a>, not least from manure runoff that can poison streams, hurt local ecosystems, and endanger the health of local residents.
The <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i3264e/i3264e00.pdf">Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)</a> has promoted insect-based food in part because insects, which are cold-blooded, are more efficient than other animals at converting their food into meat. “On average, insects can convert 2 kg of feed into 1 kg of insect mass, whereas cattle require 8 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of body weight gain,” the FAO has noted.
Insects also require less water and land than traditional livestock, and produce 10 to 100 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food than pigs, per the FAO. Their climate impact looks even better next to cows, which emit more than pigs.
The anti-entomophagy case is subtler but (I think) still compelling. We have to ask what farmed insects will be used for — and more importantly, what farming insects means for the insects themselves.
Let’s take cricket farms as an example. At a cricket farm, the animals are typically laid out in plastic bins with cardboard walls they can climb and lay eggs on, according to a report from the research group <a href="https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2020/7/1/insects-raised-for-food-and-feed-global-scale-practices-and-policy">Rethink Priorities</a>. Because crickets need humid temperatures and can easily drown in a pool of water, damp sponges are often included in the bins to both regulate humidity and provide a drinking source. This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNG7lOFBM84">video tour of a cricket farm in Finland</a> gives a good sense of the situation, as does this photo of a Canadian farm:
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<figcaption>Crickets cover cardboard lattice and feeder trays in the final grow room at Entomo Farms in Norwood, Ontario. Entomo is North America’s largest farmer of insects for human consumption.</figcaption>
<cite>James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Lewis Bollard, who runs the farm animal welfare program at Open Philanthropy — the effective, altruist-inspired grantmaking group funded by billionaires Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz — recently published an <a href="https://mailchi.mp/0d9c51072475/the-promise-and-perils-of-insect-farming">excellent rundown of the perils of insect meat</a>, specifically when it comes to industrializing insect meat production.
First and foremost for animal welfare supporters, the market for human-edible insects is completely overshadowed by the market for insects as feed for farm animals. Most insects are raised to be fed to farmed fish and chickens (or ground up into pet food). “Insect farming isn’t an alternative to factory farming — it’s a supplier,” Bollard writes.
This usage further indicts the environmental case for insect farming, he argues: “Feeding corn to insects, then feeding them to chickens, is inherently less efficient than just feeding the corn to chickens.” (To be fair, this is more an argument against the current insect-farming industry, as opposed to what some proponents want it to become: a system to feed humans more efficiently.)
Then there are the insects themselves. As Bollard notes, we really have no idea if insects are “sentient” in the way that, say, a pig or cow appears to be (or if they’re sentient at all). Pigs are really smart; <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56023720">they can play video games</a>. Flies, by contrast, aren’t going to trounce you at Skyrim. Some smart people are trying to think through <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/sHWwN8XydhXyAnxFs">what we do know about insect sentience</a>, but we still don’t know a lot.
Rethink Priorities has tried to pull together what we know about <a href="https://www.rethinkpriorities.org/blog/2020/7/1/insects-raised-for-food-and-feed-global-scale-practices-and-policy">the welfare experience of insects on farms</a>, but similarly, it’s not a lot. Insect farms mostly freeze and/or shred their animals, but we don’t know much about whether those methods cause the insects significant pain.
If you’ve read this far and aren’t a vegan or vegetarian, or even someone who thinks about animal welfare much at all, all of this may seem absurd. Insects are not creatures whose welfare we’re used to considering, an indifference that even makes its way into our vernacular. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly” doesn’t mean “she’s not a sociopath” in the same way that “she wouldn’t kick a dog” does — it means “she wouldn’t do a mean thing so trivial no one should care about it.”
But humans are constantly <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18285986/robot-animal-nature-expanding-moral-circle-peter-singer">expanding our circle of moral concern</a>. And though most humans have yet to expand their moral circle to fully include farm animals, attitudes on animal welfare have certainly evolved. The number of pets in the US has more than doubled since the 1970s, while the number euthanized every year has <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-big-drop-in-euthanasia-for-America-s-dogs-and-cats">fallen dramatically, from 20 million to 3 million</a>. Humans have become less comfortable killing animals just for being a nuisance: A half-century ago, it wasn’t so uncommon for dog owners to euthanize their pet because <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-is-it-ethical-to-euthanize-your-pet-44806">it was cheaper than putting them in a kennel</a> during their vacation. That’s unimaginable today.
It’s not a far step from “cats and dogs deserve to be treated well” to “pigs and cows deserve to be treated well.” And while “caterpillars and crickets” is a leap further from there, it’s hardly an unthinkable one. They’re animals too. <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/7/17437640/bees-zero-math-humans-science">Bees understand the number zero</a>, a concept that human children often cannot grasp. Fruit flies sometimes act in ways that suggest they <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/insects-can-experience-chronic-pain-study-finds-180972656">experience a form of chronic pain</a>. Is it so inconceivable that the insect world might deserve humane treatment?
For me, the most sobering finding of Rethink Priorities’s research is that around 1 trillion insects are already raised and killed on farms every year — a staggering number, since we’re still at the start of the insect-food boom. Because insects live very short lives, that annual total encompasses many generations; only between 79 billion and 94 billion farmed insects are alive at any given time.
I don’t know for sure whether those insects feel pain — but if there’s even a small chance they do, the scale of the suffering that would imply is massive. I’m not categorically against insect farming, but I do hope we can learn more about what insects’ lives are like before we start farming them at an even greater scale.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22445822/insect-farming-crickets-mealworm-ethics">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22445822/insect-farming-crickets-mealworm-ethics</a>

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Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei Hails Vote As Victory Over "Enemy Propaganda"

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei Hails Vote As Victory Over 'Enemy Propaganda'" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/254soh38_ayatollah-ali-khamenei-afp_625x300_07_May_21.jpg" title="Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei Hails Vote As Victory Over 'Enemy Propaganda'" /></div>
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed a presidential election won by an ultraconservative cleric (File)
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Tehran:
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday hailed a presidential election won by an ultraconservative as a victory for the nation over "enemy propaganda".
"The great winner of yesterday's elections is the Iranian nation because it has risen up once again in the face of the propaganda of the enemy's mercenary media," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-hails-vote-as-victory-over-enemy-propaganda-2467623">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-hails-vote-as-victory-over-enemy-propaganda-2467623</a>

news world Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei Hails Vote As Victory Over "Enemy Propaganda"

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed a presidential election won by an ultraconservative cleric (File) Tehran: Iran's supreme leader, Ayat...

World Refugee Day 2021: What Happens On World Refugee Day

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="World Refugee Day 2021: What Happens On World Refugee Day" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/tmkq5qvs_immigrant-generic-istock_625x300_18_July_18.jpg" title="World Refugee Day 2021: What Happens On World Refugee Day" /></div>
World Refugee Day is observed around the globe to draw attention to the plight of refugees.
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At this moment, someone somewhere is fleeing their homes due to internal strife, or persecution in a country, or water and climate crisis. These people who are forced to find shelter in a safer place, likely in a foreign land, are known as refugees. Sometimes, abandoned by their home country, these vulnerable people are made to spend their lives in temporary or community camps set up by civil society organization in the host country. To honour their resilience and courage in the face of extreme discrimination, the United Nations has designated a day, June 20, as a mark of respect.
What Is World Refugee Day And What Is Its Significance?
The day is observed around the globe to draw attention to the plight of refugees and mobilize political will and resources to urgently help these people rebuild their lives. This day is also important as it highlights the needs and dreams and rights of refugees. The United Nations General Assembly officially designated June 20 as World Refugee Day in December 2000 and it was held for the first time next year.
What Happens On This Day?
A number of events are organised across the world in support of refugees on June 20. These activities are largely led by refugees themselves and involve government officials, host communities, companies, celebrities, school children and the general public. Many of these events create opportunities to support refugees.
With the pandemic ravaging populations and families across the world for the second year, the UN Refugee Agency has <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/world-refugee-day.html">themed</a> the day, “Together we heal, learn and shine”. It has urged people and governments to help expand refugees' access to health care, to donate for educating talented young refugees, and to support refugees by other creative means such as organizing sports and art contests.
The 1951 UN Refugee Convention states that refugees are those who fled their countries and homes due to a “well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her nationality, race, religion, political opinion or membership of a particular social group”. According to <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/world-refugee-day.html">UNHCR</a>, 82.4 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced by the end of 2020 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/world-refugee-day-2021-what-happens-on-world-refugee-day-2467616">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/world-refugee-day-2021-what-happens-on-world-refugee-day-2467616</a>

news world World Refugee Day 2021: What Happens On World Refugee Day

World Refugee Day is observed around the globe to draw attention to the plight of refugees. At this moment, someone somewhere is fleeing...