一间温暖的客房,希尔顿“702房间”的故事

“亲爱的Nick,我们告诉你一项会产生深远影响的决定……”,当李福友(Nick Li)走进希尔顿酒店702房间,打开来自公司的通知时,看到开头便难以平复心情——他脑海中快速闪回20多年前,那个身在四面环山的小乡村的自己。那时的他,一定想不到有一天自己和同事们能改变几百个孩子的生活,为他们带去一些光亮。

自2015年加入成都希尔顿酒店的李福友任职安保部经理,当过兵的他身上总有释放不完的正能量,每天都会提醒团队“面对宾客脸上要带着笑容”,但很多得到他热情接待的宾客并不知道他另一个身份——成都希尔顿员工志愿者团队“蓝色能量委员会”主席。他为这个担当倾注的心力一点不比安保经理少。朋友打趣说“你这副业干得比正职还起劲儿”,李福友总是开心地“回敬”一句:“我有一个‘任性’的支持者——希尔顿。”

这次,让李福友意外而感动的是,他不仅代表成都,而且代表中国,成为希尔顿“702房间”故事的主角。“702房间” 是希尔顿为致敬所有向世界传递美好精神和正能量的员工而创作的系列视频。

“我出生和成长时的中国跟现在非常不一样,”李福友回忆道,“我从小就梦想成为军人,高中读到一半便入伍,退伍后认识到文化的重要性,我又选择重新了上大学。但这却是我姐姐从来没能实现的梦想和选择。”姐姐没有福友幸运,怀揣读书梦的她为支撑家里经济只能辍学务工,这是福友一直以来对姐姐的愧疚。

姐姐为家庭的付出促使他组织希尔顿志愿者们,跋山涉水走进大山,去改善偏远山村孩子们的教育条件。他们筹集资金建立教室和图书角,让孩子们接触计算机,还说服女童家长让孩子完成学业。

公益之路不易。幸运的是,这一路上福友一直得到希尔顿的支持。作为成都希尔顿“蓝色能量委员会”的主席,福友和同事们将其公益项目的影响力从一家酒店扩大到成都区域所有希尔顿酒店,在2017、2018两度获得希尔顿“带着目的去旅行”基金奖励。两年内,团队就在山区小学内建立了10间“希尔顿图书角”、3间“多媒体爱心教室”,并捐助了众多学习和生活物资……在集团和成都地区一众酒店同事的支持下,几百个孩子开始有机会认识大山外的世界。

正值百年华诞的希尔顿,也特别设立“希尔顿效应基金”,进一步传承百年来希尔顿带给世界的积极影响。福友和他团队也在今年获得了“希尔顿效应基金”的支持,得以完成大山里一所小学余下六间教室的改造费用。

希尔顿大中华区及蒙古总裁钱进表示:“正如希尔顿‘带着目的去旅行’战略所倡导的,我们的一举一动,皆可为社会带来正面影响。福友把对亲人的爱投射到社会,让山村孩子们拥有更好的学习环境,这正是我们‘带着目的去旅行’公益理念的意义所在。希尔顿不仅关爱团队成员,同时希望通过结合团队成员和社会各界力量,共创更加美好的世界。”

百年来希尔顿致力通过旅行为宾客、员工和社会带来深远且积极的影响。在“带着目的去旅行”企业社会责任战略的指导下,希尔顿计划到2030年在全球将其环境足迹减半、社会效益投资加倍。在大中华区,希尔顿支持17城68所高校上万名学生实现公益创想;与400多所高校合作,为6,000多名学生提供实习岗位;更支持了无数像李福友一样的员工为社会和环境的发展贡献自己的力量。

点击图片观看完整视频

希尔顿集团创始人康莱德希尔顿曾将提出,“要为我们生活的世界尽自己应负的全部责任”。几代希尔顿人更以此为志,薪火相传,才让“702房间”成为温暖的客房。

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红板报编辑部
2019.12.3

7 wars that defined the decade and changed how we fight around the world

Soldiers secure an area in view of the aurora borealis during night live-fire training as part of Exercise Spartan Cerberus at Fort Greely, Alaska, October 25, 2016.US Department of Defense

  • The past decade has tested military alliances and brought on threats few could have imagined.
  • ISIS’s use of social media to recruit fighters and disseminate propaganda was unprecedented, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s government has relied on Facebook disinformation to bolster support for his drug war and disparage his enemies.
  • Russia has used both Syria and Ukraine as testing fields for hardware and propaganda campaigns.

The past decade has tested military alliances and brought 0n threats few could have imagined.

In many ways, the principles of conflict never change — there is always an enemy to be vanquished, and the consequences are always tragic. But in the past decade, technology re-defined how we fight most of our conflicts.

Whether it’s artificial intelligence, disinformation, or hypersonic missiles, this decade’s conflicts have been defined by rapid technological advances — and the manipulation of technologies built for civilian use.

From North Korea’s nuclear threats to Syria’s chaotic battlefield, here are the conflicts that have defined our decade.

Ukraine has become a laboratory for Russia’s advanced warfare.

A pro-Russian soldier is back dropped by Russia’s flag while manning a machine-gun outside an Ukrainian military base in Perevalne, Ukraine.AP

George Kent, the State Department official who testified during an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s allegedly pressuring Ukraine for political dirt, told Military Times in July that Russia tests much of its battlefield equipment and tactics right next door in Ukraine.

“Ukraine is a laboratory of techniques and procedures,” Kent said.

Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, described a sniper “school” on the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

“They just do on the front lines with Ukraine. Much of the equipment that they are developing that shows up elsewhere, including in Syria, they try out first in Ukraine.”

Dispatches from Vice chronicled Russia’s incursion into Ukraine starting in 2014. At the time, a popular revolution had toppled the pro-Russia leadership in Kyiv, which alarmed Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and supports separatist militias in the Donbass region, on the border between Ukraine and Russia. It even has some of its own fighters mixed in with the troops, The Washington Post reports.

Russia has deployed Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine, a tactic that it’s strategically utilizing and spreading to enhance its influence in Africa and the Middle East. The Wagner Group is now reportedly operating in Syria, Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Russia also used hybrid warfare tactics like social media disinformation to foment distrust in the government and to generate support for Russian control of contested areas, which foretold the interference campaign Russia would run in the 2016 US presidential elecion, The Washington Post reported last year.

Syria’s longstanding quagmire of a civil war has gone through several battlefield iterations.

U.S. forces patrol Syrian oil fields, in eastern Syria, in late October.Associated Press

The Syrian conflict has stretched on for eight years, pulling in players as disparate as Russia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the US, as well as creating the ideal conditions for the rise of ISIS.

It’s also become another testing ground for tactics and technology.

As Russia, backing the Assad regime, asserts more power in Syria, it’s also become a proving ground for new Russian technologies.

“Syria is not a shooting range for Russian weapons, but we are still using them there, our new weapons,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a public address last year.

“When we started to use these modern weapons, including missiles, whole teams from our defense industry companies went to Syria, and worked there on-site — it is extremely important for us — to finalize them and figure out what we can count on when using them in combat conditions.”

Russian state media outlet TASS reported in 2018 that Russia had tested 210 weapons in Syria. In December of that year. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov told Russian media that the Russian military had begun using the Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic stretegic bombers, the Iskander-M ballistic missile system, and the Pantsir S1 anti-aircraft missile in Syria.

But innovation has gone the other way, too — the Russian military has started developing small drones equipped with ordnance after seeing ISIS deploy them in Syria.

And in the conflict that’s morphed from a popular uprising against a dictatorial dynasty, swelling in the intoxicating first flush of the Arab Spring, to become synonymous with desperation, despair, displacement, and brutality. Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is consistently plumbing the depths of inhumanity, is still in power; and astoundingly, due to the latest failure in American policy, stands to regain control of much of what his regime lost, first to rebels, then to ISIS, then to Kurdish-led forces backed by US troops.

ISIS changed the game with its social media recruiting strategy.

In this March 30, 2014 photo, Islamic State group militants hold up their flag as they patrol in a commandeered Iraqi military vehicle in Fallujah, Iraq.Associated Press

Although ISIS is determined to force its followers back into the Middle Ages, it has employed a strikingly 21st-century approach to recruitment, depending heavily on social media to reach followers, especially those from the west.

Larger social media companies like Twitter have cracked down on the group’s accounts since it first rose to prominence in 2014. But the group moved on to encrypted social networks like Telegram, the encrypted chat platform. CBS reported in 2019 that the 2015 Paris terror attacks were planned using the messaging app.

It’s popular because it claims to be secure, and “Telegram is less likely to crack down” on ISIS groups or members than other social companies, according to Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and the author of “Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad.”

There has been a coordinated effort to remove ISIS channels from Telegram, which has had limited success, according to a new piece in Wired. Researchers Charlie Winter and Amarnath Amarsingham describe the shell ISIS networks that have popped up after the European Union’s Internet Referral Unit (IRU) blitzed the main ISIS propaganda and foll0wer accounts over the weekend, and at least some ISIS accounts have shown up on the network TamTam.

Speaking to Wired in 2016, New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi described how she tracks stories about ISIS and its members online, saying that the group pushed out information on multiple channels simultaneously to reach potential jihadis, or to push out their gruesome propaganda videos. “They’ve become so good at it, it’s unbelievable.”

President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war in the Philippines has killed thousands and shocked human rights advocates.

Then-presidential candidate Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte talks to the media before casting his vote at a polling precinct for national elections at Daniel Aguinaldo National High School in Davao city in southern Philippines, May 9, 2016.Erik De Castro/Reuters

Duterte propelled himself to the presidency in 2016 by promising an end to the drug problem in the Philippines. But his method — thousands of extrajudicial killings — elicited a response from the UN, calling for an investigation into his government’s brutal methods.

The Philippines, a US ally in the South China Sea, is killing its civilians without a fair trial. The government acknowledges killing roughly 5,000 people in this effort, but human rights groups say the real number is many times that.

Authorities also arrest those who are critical. Maria Ressa, of the news organization Rappler, has been arrested multiple times coming to and from the Philippines after critical reporting on the Duterte government and its drug war.

Ressa herself uncovered Facebook disinformation campaigns against her, which were tied to Duterte’s government, The Washington Post reported earlier this year.

In the Philippines, where about 95% of citizens who are online use Facebook, the ability to spread misinformation and target specific individuals like Ressa and other journalists is heightened.

Facebook has become an increasingly powerful weapon in Duterte’s war on drugs, and his war against the truth. As BuzzFeed reported last year, many Filipinos use Facebook for news because it’s free; Duterte and his government have used that to their advantage to drum up spport for his brutal policies and ruin his opponents.

China’s well on its way to surpassing the US military, thanks to technological investment — and good, old-fashioned intellectual property theft.

Jon Woo/Reuters

China has emerged as a significant rival to the US on the battlefield. While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doesn’t have quite as much firepower as the US military — it’s ranked third on Global Firepower’s list of the most powerful militaries, while the US is first — experts are warning that China is quickly catching up to the US, and set to overtake the military technologically.

Speaking at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in September, retired Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound,  said that the US is facing a “holy s— moment” because of China’s rapid and expansive technological buildup. It’s dominating in the fields of 5G and artificial intelligence (AI), and advancing in the development of hypersonic weapons.

China’s rise on the battlefield coincides with its economic dominance and an aggressive strategy that incorporates significant state funding into research and development. But China has also been accused of stealing classified national security informaiton from the US.

The biggest intellectual property theft in human history” is how Defense Secretary Mark Esper put China’s strategy of allegedly stealing or copying the plans for weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter.

North Korea has amped up its weapons testing under Kim Jong Un, pushing it closer to the brink of war with the US.

US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un talk before a meeting in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, Korea.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, succeeding his father Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader has sent increasingly threatening signals to the US by developing and testing nuclear weapons.

Kim has overseen four nuclear weapons tests during his tenure, as well as significant and rapid reported developments in its nuclear programs, includng the reported ability to miniaturize warheads and the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBCMs) that could, the country claims, strike the continental United States.

As talks between the US and North Korea have broken down under Trump, North Korea has sent threatening messages to the US, indicating that time is running out for the US to offer North Korea something it wants — like the easing of sanctions, or a promise to decrease its military presence on the Korean peninsula — before the hermit kingdom resumes ever more threatening weapons testing. 

Iran’s strategy of employing proxy militias in wars throughout the Middle East has helped destabilize the region and fueled some of the worst conflicts there.

Members of the Iranian revolutionary guard march during a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), in Tehran September 22, 2011.REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Hezbollah, the most well-known Iranian proxy militia, has been operating in Lebanon since the 1980s, where they wield undeniable influence in the government and in conflict with neighboring Israel.

But in the past decade, Iran has been inserting itself into devastating regional conflicts to cement its influence and engage in proxy conflicts with its regional foes, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah militants begam streaming into Syria mostly in 2013 and 2014 in support of the Assad regime, which serves as a “vital conduit between Iran and Hezbollah,” allowing for Iranian cash and materiel to get to Hezbollah, but also providing a safe location for training and weapons storage, according to a 2014 report from the Institute for the Study of War.

In Yemen, Iran supports the Houthi rebels against the Saudi-backed, internationally-recognized government, in a five-year civil war that has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with the death toll around 100,000 and disease, starvation, and poverty racking the population.

And in Iraq, Shia militias with ties to Iran fight under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF. There have been some attempts to integrate the PMF into the regular Iraqi forces, but they are as yet unsuccessful, or only marginally so.

The PMF — and therefore Iran — also has outsize influence in Iraqi politics, which is troubling to many Iraqi citizens and has inflamed protests all over the country since October.

Source Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/7-wars-defined-decade-changed-what-it-means-to-fight-2019-11?international=true&r=US&IR=T#irans-strategy-of-employing-proxy-militias-in-wars-throughout-the-middle-east-has-helped-destabilize-the-region-and-fueled-some-of-the-worst-conflicts-there-7

Amazon fires are causing glaciers in the Andes to melt even faster

If you have turned on a TV or read the news during the past few months, you have probably heard of the widespread fires that wrought havoc on the Amazon rainforest this year. Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country’s logging and farming industries.

The smoke from the fires rose high into the atmosphere and could be seen from space. Some regions of Brazil became covered in thick smoke that closed airports and darkened city skies.

As the rainforest burns, it releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and larger particles of so-called “black carbon” (smoke and soot). The phrase “enormous amounts” hardly does the numbers justice – in any given year, the burning of forests and grasslands in South America emits a whopping 800,000 tonnes of black carbon into the atmosphere.

This truly astounding amount is almost double the black carbon produced by all combined energy use in Europe over 12 months. Not only does this absurd amount of smoke cause health issuesand contribute to global warming but, as a growing number of scientific studies are showing, it also more directly contributes to the melting of glaciers.

In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers has outlined how smoke from fires in the Amazon in 2010 made glaciers in the Andes melt more quickly.South America: the Andes mountains run along the western edge of the Amazon basin (centre). AridOcean / shutterstock

When fires in the Amazon emit black carbon during the peak burning season (August to October), winds carry these clouds of smoke to Andean glaciers, which can sit higher than 5,000 metres above sea level.

Despite being invisible to the naked eye, black carbon particles affect the ability of the snow to reflect incoming sunlight, a phenomenon known as “albedo”. Similar to how a dark-coloured car will heat up more quickly in direct sunlight when compared with a light-coloured one, glaciers covered by black carbon particles will absorb more heat, and thus melt faster.

By using a computer simulation of how particles move through the atmosphere, known as HYSPLIT, the team was able to show that smoke plumes from the Amazon are carried by winds to the Andes, where they fall as an invisible mist across glaciers. Altogether, they found that fires in the Amazon in 2010 caused a 4.5% increase in water runoff from Zongo Glacier in Bolivia.The Zongo glacier is found on the slopes of Huayna Potosi, one of Bolivia’s highest mountains. Ryan Michael Wilson / shutterstock

Crucially, the authors also found that the effect of black carbon depends on the amount of dust covering a glacier – if the amount of dust is higher, then the glacier will already be absorbing most of the heat that might have been absorbed by the black carbon. Land clearing is one of the reasons that dust levels over South America doubled during the 20th century.

Glaciers are some of the most important natural resources on the planet. Himalayan glaciers provide drinking water for 240m people, and 1.9 billion rely on them for food. In South America, glaciers are crucial for water supply – in some towns, including Huaraz in Peru, more than 85% of drinking water comes from glaciers during times of drought. However, these truly vital sources of water are increasingly under threat as the planet feels the effects of global warming. Glaciers in the Andes have been receding rapidly for the last 50 years.

The tropical belt of South America is predicted to become more dry and arid as the climate changes. A drier climate means more dust, and more fires. It also means more droughts, which make towns more reliant on glaciers for water.

Unfortunately, as the above study shows, the fires assisted by dry conditions help to make these vital sources of water vanish more quickly. The role of black carbon in glacier melting is an exceedingly complex process – currently, the climate models used to predict the future melting of glaciers in the Andes do not incorporate black carbon. As the authors of this new study show, this is likely causing the rate of glacial melt to be underestimated in many current assessments.

With communities reliant on glaciers for water, and these same glaciers likely to melt faster as the climate warms, work examining complex forces like black carbon and albedo changes is needed more now than ever before.

Source Link: https://theconversation.com/amazon-fires-are-causing-glaciers-in-the-andes-to-melt-even-faster-128023

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12月12日,英国将提前举行大选。目前,各党派密集开展的竞选活动进入白热化阶段,“脱欧”和英国国家医疗服务体系(NHS)等议题成为各方争论的焦点。苏格兰首席大臣尼古拉·斯特金(Nicola Sturgeon)在英国《金融时报》网站上撰文指出,即将举行的大选,将“定义和塑造英国”。详情>>

红板报编辑部
2019.12.2

新闻晚知道:今天你可能错过的大事儿

① 寿司之神餐厅被米其林除名
② 网易与被裁员工达成和解
③ VIPKID悬赏10万元寻找破产谣言发布者

【热议】寿司之神餐厅被米其林除名:不接受普通人预约,就无评选资格

近日,日本米其林官方发布了2020年版《东京米其林指南》,一直被认为是“拥有世界上最好寿司服务”的“数寄屋桥次郎本店”却从榜单上消失了。落榜理由并非餐点质量下降,而是这家高级寿司店已不接受普通人的预约,因而失去评选资格。详情>>

【热议】网易就“患病职工离职”事件处理结果:处分4名主管1名员工

29日下午,此前发文称遭网易“暴力裁员”的前员工,在微信公众号“你的游戏我的心”发消息称,他已经与网易达成和解,网易将全力协助其治疗。网易在关于此事的处理结果中写道,已对涉事的4名主管和1名员工进行了不同层级处分,并向这位同事及其家人、公众致歉。详情>>

【科技】被传言破产,VIPKID悬赏10万元寻找消息发布者

继否认倒闭传闻一个月后,VIPKID又被传言称即将破产。VIPKID在微信公众号否认破产,并宣布悬赏10万元寻找传言发布者。为证明该传言系谣言,VIPKID表示:“刚完成腾讯10亿元追加融资,且开学季收入突破27亿元。”详情>>

【时事】多所香港高校排名下跌,业界忧校园政治化拖垮学术发展

近日各项高校国际排名陆续公布,香港高校在多项排名中名次下跌。有教育界人士认为,校园政治化长远拖累香港学术发展,造成人才流失。香港教育政策关注社主席张民炳表示,香港高等教育出现政治化的情况越来越严重,这些不必要的政治气氛冲淡了学术、研究等的重要性。详情>>

【热议】李国庆俞渝离婚案开庭,李国庆要求平分股权

29日,当当创始人李国庆与妻子俞渝离婚案在北京某法院开庭。据悉,俞渝并未出庭,而是委托律师代理,李国庆则背着双肩包出现在法院门口。他表示,此次开庭他的诉求是离婚、平分股权,还透露手头有充足证据,对判决结果有信心。详情>>

红板报编辑部
2019.11.29

Climate refugees: why we can’t yet predict where millions of displaced people will go

November 28, 2019 9.41am GMT

In the near future, global warming is expected to create millions of climate refugees, and individuals and organisations are already searching for ways to help them. Some ideas are obvious, such as improving conditions in refugee camps.

But there are also more high-tech projects such as using algorithms to forecast where displaced people will travel to. Such forecasts are crucial. They can help support organisations prepare in the right places, they can evaluate current policy (by assessing a counterfactual “what if” scenario) and they can also help predict refugee populations in remote or dangerous areas where there is little empirical data.

So we can predict where climate refugees will go, right?

No. Despite bold and excitable claims that refugee forecasting is largely resolved, we are not convinced. As computer scientists who work on this exact problem, such claims seem like a painful example of running before we can walk.

Almost four years ago, we started to research how people fled from armed conflicts. Many people were displaced due to the Arab Spring and the Syrian War, but little work had been done to predict where they could end up.Africa’s Sahel region contains many of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people. mbrand85 / shutterstock

With our colleague David Bell, we created a tool that could help, and published our work in Nature Scientific Reports. Our tool represents every person as an independent agent, and then uses simple rules-of-thumb derived from scientific insights – for instance “people tend to avoid travelling through mountains when it is raining” – to determine when they will move next, and to where.

This is different from “machine learning” approaches, which use historical data to “train” the algorithm to generate rules and thus predictions. So, for example, machine learning might be given this sort of data: “the number of people that arrived in a refugee camp close to a mountainous area in a conflict that occurred perhaps many years ago, or more recently but in a different country.” The main issue is that historical data used for machine learning is always quantitative, and never is about the conflict that the simulation is directly developed for.

To see how our method worked in practice, we tested our tool against UNHCR data from three recent conflicts in Burundi, the Central African Republic and Mali. Our tool correctly predicted where more than 75% of the refugees would go.Network models for (a) Burundi, (b) Central African Republic and (c) Mali. Conflict zones (red circles), refugee camps (dark green circles), forwarding hubs (light green circles) and other major settlements (yellow circles). Suleimenova et al (2017)

We have since applied our analysis to refugees fleeing conflict in South Sudan, as part of the HiDALGO project. In this study, forthcoming in the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, we also looked at how policy decisions like border closures affected the movement of refugees into neighbouring countries, such as Ethiopia or Uganda.

We found there was indeed a link – closing the Uganda border in our model causes 40% fewer “agents” to arrive in camps after 300 days, and that effect lingers even after we reopened the border on day 301. Our tool correctly predicted where 75% of the refugees would actually go in real life.

But doing a correct “retrodiction” in these historical cases does not mean that you can do a forecast. Forecasting where people will go is much harder than predicting a historical situation, for three reasons.A school in Uganda for refugees from war in South Sudan. Roberto Maldeno / flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

  1. Every model makes assumptions. For instance, a model that forecasts where refugees go might makes assumptions about their mode of transport, or the likelihood that they stay overnight in a place where violence has previously occurred. When forecasting, we need to know what happens when we give these assumptions a little shake (we examine this in the VECMA project). The less evidence we have for an assumption, the more we need to shake it and analyse how our model responds. Machine learning models generate implicit (and ill-justified) assumptions automatically when they are trained – for example, chosen destinations correlate with the stock value of company X. In agent-based models, these assumptions come from physical factors like the presence of mountains or armed groups, and are explicitly testable.
  2. Forecasting one thing requires you to forecast many other things as well. When we forecast how people escape conflict, we must forecast how the conflict will evolve. And that could depend on future market prices, weather/climate effects, or political changes, all of which would need forecasting too. To be clear: we did not require any of these models when we validated our predictions against a historical situation, so we are building new models just to make forecasts possible.
  3. Forcibly displaced people are usually fleeing from unexpected and disruptive events. Here the data upon which the machine learning algorithms are “trained” is incomplete, biased or often non-existent. We argue that agent-based models are more effective because they do not need training data, and benefit from understanding the processes that drive forced displacement.

So we have not cracked it.

Yes, forecasting is hard. We do not yet know where climate refugees and other forcibly displaced people are going. We still need huge supercomputers just to forecast next week’s weather.

So it pays to be suspicious of the idea that refugee forecasting is already solved, especially if linked to claims that the “next frontier” for computer scientists is in (controversially) extracting data from vulnerable refugees who are often unaware of the privacy and security risks. Given how hard it remains to predict where the millions of climate refugees will go, the “next frontier” is still the last frontier.

Source Link: https://theconversation.com/climate-refugees-why-we-cant-yet-predict-where-millions-of-displaced-people-will-go-119414

Thanksgiving Is Another Reminder of What America Forgot

The absence of Native perspectives in American history books and classrooms has been remarked on for over 50 years. Will it ever change?

Nick Martin November 28, 2019

In a December 1862 letter to the Senate, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the execution of 39 Sioux citizens. In 1851, the Santee Sioux had ceded the land known as Minnesota to the United States in a pair of treaties, in exchange for a constant supply of services and wares to be provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Like countless treaties signed by the U.S., the agreements were not honored. Corruption consumed the BIA, and basic food items were subject to price gouging. And so, on the brink of starvation in the early winter of 1862, several hundred Sioux raided white towns and villages, looking for the rations that the government had stolen from them and that the colonizers had previously refused to trade with them.

If one is to believe the historians, Lincoln’s decision to impose 39 death penalties for the Sioux Uprising was one of delicate political balance: He had to kill enough Native resisters so as to stifle any future uprisings but not so many that he provoked another. Thirty-nine was the number he landed on after reviewing the transcripts, down from the 303 execution requests made by the military leaders in Minnesota. His letter to the Senate simultaneously served as both the largest mass execution order and the largest clemency order in U.S. history. Ultimately, 38 Sioux were hanged by the neck until death for having the gall to try to keep their people alive. As they stood atop the trap door, with nooses waiting to deliver the final snap, the condemned men spoke their names and cried out “I’m here! I’m here!”

Ten months later, Lincoln signed another letter. This one was a proclamation: As of October 3, 1863, the president, hoping to bring a symbolic sense of calm and joy to a nation torn in two by the still-raging Civil War, declared the fourth Thursday in November to be “a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” Never mind the true history of the day Lincoln sought to memorialize, which, aside from its first peaceable but fragile iteration, had twice commemorated the slaying of Wampanoags in battle. Like the 38 Sioux, that was lost to the past: All that mattered was what the living told themselves and their children.

If you grew up going to public school in this country, you probably don’t recall much, if anything, about Lincoln’s execution order. In the long run, it was hardly exceptional for the U.S., save for how many Native lives it doomed, and even that figure was dwarfed by an endless number of massacres and “battles,” carried out by the military, private companies, and citizens. It was business as usual for a young nation with imperialist desires, with a touch of faux mercy to make it go down smoother for a president who would preside over the forced removal of the Navajo and Pueblo people and the Sands Creek Massacre of 1864. In truth, Lincoln, like many who would follow him, was not so different in practice from the more notoriously Native-hating Andrew Jackson: another chief executive who cared little for or about the Indigenous people he shared a continent with. But American textbooks only have room for so many villains.

It is a pity that so many Americans today think of the Indian as a romantic or comic figure in American history without contemporary significance. In fact, the Indian plays much the same role in our American society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith.

Just a little over 100 years after Lincoln signed the first Thanksgiving proclamation, these words by Felix Cohen appeared quoted in the opening to the 1969 Kennedy Report on Indian Education. The report was helmed by Senator Ted Kennedy and serves as a bedrock document in the Native education and political communities: For the first time, possibly ever, it signaled that major U.S. political players were finally paying attention to the erasure of Native communities from the American mosaic. As part of the report, a review of 100 educational texts taken from public schools across the country came to the belated conclusion that Native people were viewed as little more than “subhuman wild beasts in the path of civilization.”

While I was reporting last year on North Carolina’s decision to close down the High Plains Indian School and integrate my tribe, the Sappony, in 1963, I heard directly from family members about how such slanted curricula affected Native students’ experience. My uncles and aunts told me stories of the other kids at school asking them if they had scalped anyone or if they carried tomahawks, and of discriminatory treatment doled out by teachers and administrators to Sappony children, whose only crime was having skin that was a little darker than their own.

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In the 50 years since the Kennedy Report was published, Americans have barely moved an inch when it comes to demanding an accurate historical or contemporary view of Native people be taught in public schools. And this has had a marked effect on Native children forced to listen to their histories being twisted to fit a narrative of deity-ordained land theft and warfare. Writing on this in 1985, Lee Little Soldier found that Native students still often felt “trapped between their birthright and the dominant society, losing touch with the former, but not feeling comfortable in the latter.”

But almost more important than the need for Native children to see themselves properly represented is for those who will have a say in how these curricula are established (in other words, the white-run PTAs and local administrative boards) to correct their own understanding of American history. They also need to accurately perceive the present, realizing that Native communities and individuals exist everywhere, from the reservation to the city to the suburbs. Only by engaging with these communities, including them in the lesson-planning process as living societies rather than mythical figures, can the American school system begin to teach its children how not to exclude and appropriate Native history.

This point was underlined in a 2006 article in the Phi Delta Kappan by Bobby Ann Starnes. While Starnes was relatively well educated on Native history, she found when she began teaching at a predominantly Indigenous school system that all of her knowledge had been historicized—she had no idea of what it meant to actually converse with and teach and befriend Native people, teaching history in a way that has moral weight in the present. “What seem like small matters of word choice,” she wrote, “are important (e.g., did Indians wage war or resist aggression?).” 

Recent years have seen small steps toward delivering teachers and students the overdue updates required to teach these new lessons. The National Educators Association now makes available materials on how to teach Thanksgiving in a historically accurate and culturally sensitive manner. Signed in December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act, President Barack Obama’s replacement for No Child Left Behind, required states and local educational agencies to consult with tribes and tribal organizations as they developed their state lesson plans, should they hope to obtain Title I grant funding. Charter schools established to teach history through a Native lens have sprouted with increasing popularity in cities such as Denver and Oklahoma City and Seattle. (As a case in North Carolina recently showed, there are drawbacks to this approach.) But half a century after the federal government declared the country’s biased Indigenous history lessons an educational crisis, these partial measures feel shockingly insufficient.

Fall is a brutal time of year to be Native. Halloween brings “Sexy Indian Princess” costumes. Native American Heritage Month almost inevitably comes with fumbles that undercut the purpose, even without a president trying to squeeze “Founding Fathers” into the month as well. And then there’s Thanksgiving. Even in 2019, principals and teachers deem it appropriate to dress their children up as Natives and celebrate “an annual Pow Wow,” and then post pictures on social media, before being yelled at and quickly deleting their appropriative efforts to whitewash history. Nor are the stereotypes and questionable attempts at representation limited to rural schools, as Saturday Night Live’s recent skit with Will Ferrell, Fred Armisen, and Maya Rudolph dressing up as the relatives of Matoaka (commonly known as Pocahontas) and rambling off a series of shallow punch lines again showed.

Native children have never had the pleasure of seeing themselves and their people adequately acknowledged in their teachers’ lesson plans. Thanksgiving is handled with satin gloves for the sake of the white children. They can learn the name of the chief who sat with the pilgrims of Plymouth, but not that those same pilgrims mounted his son’s head on a pike above their town and left his body to publicly rot. To acknowledge the true history of Thanksgiving would only be the first step, a slippery slope to a nation daring to utter the word “genocide” when thinking about its foundations. It would be a screeching slam of the guitar in the middle of a rendition of “This Land Is Your Land.” It would be the truth.

Source Link: https://newrepublic.com/article/155837/thanksgiving-another-reminder-america-forgot

新闻晚知道:今天你可能错过的大事儿

① 博主宇芽前男友因故意伤害被行拘20日
② 携号转网数据:移动转出最多,电信转入最多
③ 综艺节目《追我吧》停录,部分设施被拆除

【热议】博主宇芽前男友因故意伤害被行拘20日

重庆市江北区公安机关经调查,“沱沱的风魔教”陈某自2019年4月初至2019年8月底多次对“宇芽YUYAMIKA” 何某某实施拖拽、推搡、殴打等故意伤害违法行为。公安机关根据《治安管理处罚法》给予行政处罚,行政拘留二十日,并处罚款。详情>>

【国际】韩国军方:朝鲜向半岛东部海域方向发射两枚不明飞行物

据韩国联合参谋本部消息,朝鲜于28日下午17时左右在其咸镜南道连浦一带向半岛东部海域方向发射两枚不明飞行物。联合参谋本部表示,目前韩军方正在密切关注朝鲜动向,并进一步分析今天发射的相关数据。详情>>

【科技】工信部透露运营商携号转网数据:移动转出最多,电信转入最多

工信部透露三家运营商用户转入转出的情况:总体上来看,截至11月26日,中国电信、中国移动、中国联通转出的用户数占全部转出用户的比例分别是16.3%、57.6%和26.1%,转入的占比是49.3%、28.1%和22.6%。详情>>

【时事】北京一听障康复中心被指虐童,2人被刑拘

11月28日,北京市延庆区官方政务微博发布消息称:有网友反映北京明声听力康复中心存在打骂儿童情况,经查情况属实。目前,犯罪嫌疑人张某、李某某已被延庆警方依法刑事拘留。事件调查及相应处置工作正在进行中。 详情>>

【热议】探访高以翔节目录制地:《追我吧》停录,部分设施被拆除

台湾艺人高以翔在录制浙江卫视真人秀节目《追我吧》时,突发心源性猝死。事后,新京报记者赶往事发地宁波国际金融中心,现场有工作人员正在拆卸节目设施,其中一名工作人员表示,节目已经暂时停录。 详情>>

红板报编辑部
2019.11.28

新闻晚知道:今天你可能错过的大事儿

① 台湾演员高以翔录节目时晕倒,不治身亡
② 122所内地高等院校招收香港学生
③ 苹果iPhone明年将换用高通基带

【时事】云南安石隧道事故已致6人遇难,仍有6人被困

人民日报消息,26日,云凤安石隧道出口处发生突泥涌水。至今日下午,共有搜救出7名遇险失联人员,其中6人遇难,1人在凤庆县人民医院救治,生命体征平稳。现场仍有6名作业人员遇险失联。详情>>

【热议】35岁台湾演员高以翔在浙江录节目时晕倒 不治身亡

今日凌晨,知名博主爆料,演员高以翔在节目录制过程中晕倒抢救。后浙江新闻发文,证实高以翔抢救无效去世。综艺节目录制接连出现意外,呼吁引起重视,关爱艺人生命。详情>>

【热议】香港迪士尼取消跨年派对,已购套票顾客将获退款

11月27日,香港迪士尼表示,对目前深夜交通状况进行仔细评估后,决定取消原定于12月31日晚上举行的“迪士尼奇妙倒数派对”。香港迪士尼发言人表示,已购买套票的顾客将获退款。详情>>

【热议】香港特区教育局:122所内地高等院校招收香港学生

香港特区教育局发布新闻公报,欢迎国家教育部公布2020年内地高校招收香港中学文凭考试学生计划(文凭试收生计划)的具体安排。参与文凭试收生计划的内地高等院校将增加至122所,分布内地21个省(直辖市)及一个自治区,并接受2020年香港中学文凭考试考生报名。 详情>>

【科技】iPhone信号问题有望解决,苹果明年将换用高通基带

据外媒报道,2020年新iPhone将全面取消现用的英特尔基带,换用高通X55 5G基带,因基带造成的信号问题有望得到改善。除基带外,新iPhone将搭载三条LCP,支持毫米波高频频段,网速将得到显著提升。 详情>>

红板报编辑部
2019.11.27