From 77d1eacaa916240ddaa462377ba419a415e1c0cb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Navan Chauhan Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:44:21 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Added daily report --- archive-covid-19/21 December, 2023.html | 169 +++++++++ archive-daily-dose/21 December, 2023.html | 422 ++++++++++++++++++++++ index.html | 4 +- 3 files changed, 593 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 archive-covid-19/21 December, 2023.html create mode 100644 archive-daily-dose/21 December, 2023.html diff --git a/archive-covid-19/21 December, 2023.html b/archive-covid-19/21 December, 2023.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45aa2a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/archive-covid-19/21 December, 2023.html @@ -0,0 +1,169 @@ + + + + + + 21 December, 2023 + +Covid-19 Sentry + +

Covid-19 Sentry

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Contents

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From Preprints

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From Clinical Trials

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From PubMed

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From Patent Search

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Daily-Dose

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Contents

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From New Yorker

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From Vox

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+Chart showing wool having far higher greenhouse gas emissions than nylon, cotton, polyester, polyacryl, viscose, or flax +
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+But the problem goes deeper than wool versus synthetics because these industries have made good bedfellows. Widespread cheap synthetics have enabled fast fashion, making it possible for brands to produce stupefying volumes of disposable fabrics. These are now very commonly combined with wool to create hybrid garments. According to the Center for Biodiversity and Collective Fashion Justice’s recent analysis of 13 top clothing brands, more than half of wool items were blended with synthetics, giving them in-demand properties like machine washability — meaning, in other words, that synthetics are being used to enhance the appeal of wool. +

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+It’s unfortunate, in this context, to see fashion critics who ought to know better fetishize unadulterated animal fibers instead of thinking clearly about their outsize role in a many-layered harmful system. “The climate, biodiversity and ethical impacts of the wool and cashmere industries are so poorly understood” in fashion circles, Hakansson said in an email. One prominent fashion influencer, for example, when asked which fabrics were the most ethical, recently said that “natural” fibers (including animal ones like wool) were best because they’re biodegradable. +

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+This is sometimes true, though not always — it depends on how the fabric is processed, for example, as wool made with certain dyes or coated with plastic is rendered not biodegradable. But a contextless statement about biodegradability is more misleading than useful in helping people understand the full picture of how their clothing affects the environment. So it’s not surprising that the public is just as confused about the impacts of animal-based garments; a 2017 global consumer survey, for example, found that 87 percent of respondents believed wool is “safe for the environment,” and more than half said it was “sustainably produced.” +

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+Our naturalistic fantasies +

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+Several times this year, after suffering through lectures by various influencers extolling animal fibers, I thought back to a widely discussed piece by data scientist Hannah Ritchie on the naturalistic fallacies that pervade popular understanding of what’s good for the planet. “We’re skeptical of synthetic stuff that comes out of a factory,” she wrote, while we find virtue in things that seem natural or primordial. For example, consumers are consistently more likely to say that eating locally grown food instead of food shipped across the world is better for the planet than eating less meat, even though decidedly the opposite is true. +

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+I’d take Ritchie’s point a step further. Perceptions of the natural don’t emerge from nowhere; they’re invented and marketed. And animal agribusiness is especially good at selling a folksy image that masks the industry’s violence and environmental destruction. +

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+In the minds of many consumers, the wool industry has naturalized itself with the idea that we’re doing sheep a favor by shearing off their hair, a myth so persistent that it’s become lodged in the minds of even some people who think about animal ethics for a living. “Sheep that are not regularly shorn, as they’ve now evolved to be, suffer from having their heavy coat dragging them down,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who recently wrote a book on what we owe nonhuman animals, told the Boston Review in defense of wool earlier this year. +

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+Nussbaum’s account has it entirely backward. Sheep were bred by humans to overproduce hair, they didn’t evolve that way — and unlike wild animals, domesticated sheep don’t simply reproduce without human management. They’re products, brought into the world by agribusiness according to demand for their hair, milk, and meat, and with exactly as much regard for their welfare as will maximize profit. We could choose to simply stop breeding them and restore native ecosystems in their place. +

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+A worker holding an electric prod stands behind a crowd of sheep and herds them down a narrow metal bridge onto a truck Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media +
+A worker with an electric prod loads sheep, purchased at an auction sales yard, onto a transport truck in Australia. They’ll be taken to slaughter, to a new farm, or shipped overseas. +
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+Other animal wools, like goat and alpaca, are smaller industries than sheep, “but on the basis of each spool of wool being produced, they all cause pretty comparable greenhouse gas emissions,” Hayek said. They’re also no less cruel. +

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+While defenders of animal-based materials often claim that they’re higher quality from a consumer perspective than synthetics and therefore less likely to end up in a landfill, this is not the whole picture. The manufacturing process and treatment of workers, not just the material itself, affect the quality of a garment. If you know where to look, there are plenty of durable, warm, stylish, animal-free fabrics on offer (like the Canadian outerwear brand Noize, which, in my anecdotal experience, is universally beloved by people who avoid animal fibers.) Innovative plant-based fabrics like vegetable cashmere, made from soybeans, are also on the rise. +

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+We still, in the end, have to wear clothes. So what should we wear? In a reasonable world, ordinary people wouldn’t have to exhaust themselves sifting through contradictory sustainability claims because fast fashion and animal agriculture would be well-regulated. But in this world, we have to use our judgment. And we have to be extremely skeptical of letting nostalgic appeals to nature commandeer our ethical reasoning. +

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+With 100 billion new garments manufactured globally every year and overwhelming volumes of discarded clothing, both Hayek and Hakansson stressed that the best option is to buy a lot less clothing overall, and buy used when possible. “How much raw material production do we really need?” Hakansson said. “If people are desperate to have a product like wool, you should be buying it secondhand.” There are also coats made from post-consumer recycled synthetics, which she opts for to keep warm. +

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+“They’re not necessarily perfect,” she said, “but we need to be at least making the best decision we can. And animal-derived materials across the board fail to meet what should be considered best practice.” +

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+A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here! +

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From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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From Jokes Subreddit

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