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thorne93 · 4 years

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Unforeseen Chasm (Part 62)

Prompt: Two sisters fall for men that are absolute enemies. The love they have could tear all of them apart, or it could bring them together.

Word Count:2392

Warnings: Language,self-isolation, fighting, attempted robbery, misery, keeping memories alive, hopeful new start. Note: This is by far the longest thing I’ve ever written (including my novels). It’s a collaboration with the amazing @mrs-dragneel-stark-solo. It started as a funny “What if…?” and it evolved and got huge. This took two years to write. We are both proud and happy and we hope you enjoy it. It follows from Thor 1 to Endgame in the MCU. Some of the timelines may be off in order to fit certain people, and some characters may show up earlier or in different ways than they have in the movie. But for the most part, it follows the MCU. It also has a bit of crossover with some other Marvel characters throughout the story.

Masterlist for Unforeseen Chasm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Time seemed to pass… slowly as it were.

You’d begun a new chapter in your life. If you could call this your life. It was just sort of existing at this point. You didn’t want to hurt Shannon with an untimely death, but you didn’t see much point in going on. Shannon had her life. She had Tony, Bruce, Steve, Nat, Rhodey. She was surrounded by those that she loved. Sure, she lost Peter in the snap, but in the grand scheme of things she’d lost very little.

You on the other hand had lost your homeland. Your birth parents -- dead. Your semi-adoptive parents, Odin and Frigga -- dead. Your closest friends, Stephen, Vision, Wanda, Pietro -- gone. No one knew where Clint was. Thor didn’t even talk to you now. No one at the Avengers Compound would even miss you besides Shannon.

Although, at this point, you might as well be dead. You left no clue for Shannon to find you. You left behind your phone. You’d completely gone undercover.

The world was fragile, more so than it had been before. Governments were falling apart. There were societies crumbling. World leaders had disappeared. People that were heavily needed to run the world, were gone: doctors, nurses, engineers, politicians, police, mechanics, scientists, veterinarians, farmers… everyone. Every person in this world had a vital role and for the last two months it had been scrambling to make up for the gap.

The world started to function again, barely, but when push came to shove, cities had to keep things going. One of those cities was Paris.

You were walking back to your hotel from a night at the Louvre. This was what your life had been, one sight to see after another. On the way through an alley, you heard rustling up ahead, and just as you were about to hone in on it, three guys jumped out from behind a corner, armed with knives.

“Nous ne voulons pas vous faire mal mais nous le ferons. remettre la bourse,” the big one demanded and you frowned, trying to remember French. Although, you didn't need much context. Knives, alleyway, darkness, and the only thing you had valuable was a purse.

“Parlez vous anglais?” you asked, cocking your head.

The three men laughed, throwing their heads back. The confidence was unnerving, and displaced.

“Oui, uh, sweetheart?” he said with a thick accent. “Hand over the purse.”

“Oh… Oh you mean this purse?” you asked, holding it out. “Come and get it,” you challenged, your eyes narrowing as the rage bubbled up in you easily.

They charged at you but you dodged the first one, the largest one. He tripped behind you and turned to try to grab you in a headlock, but you flipped him over. The other two ran forward, their knives out.

You kicked one of them before punching the other one. The one you punched came up behind you and hit the back of your knees but you didn’t buckle. You turned to face him, your hand hitting his throat quickly. He grabbed it, gasping for breath as he backed up.

The third guy grabbed at your hair but you grabbed his wrist quicker, bending it and squeezing it until you heard a break in the bones. He looked at you with fear in his eyes before he cried out from pain.

The big one tried to wrap his arms around you, but you were tiring of this so you lit your hands, grabbing him with your power and launching him into some trash bins several feet away from you. The other two looked on in bewilderment and fear as they backed away. They started to run away, quickly.

“What’s the matter? Purse wasn’t worth it?” you called after them angrily, smirking.

“Trouble just seems to find you, doesn’t it, cher?” that all too familiar Cajun voice said from behind you.

“Go home, Remy,” was all you said in a cold voice as you picked up your purse and began to make your way back to the hotel, taking the streets this time. Remy walked beside you. “How did you find me?” you asked, nothing but contempt in your tone.

“Is this any way to greet your oldest friend?” he asked, feigning offense.

“I’m really not in the mood. I didn’t want to be found.”

“I’ll say! Do you have any idea how long I been lookin’?” he asked.

“Remy,” you groaned. “I left for a reason. I didn’t want to be around anyone.”

He stopped walking, grabbing your shoulders as he became serious. “I know, cheri. I know you lost him,” was all he said.

And that’s all it took for you to fall into his arms, a sobbing mess. It was embarrassing, breaking down like this in the middle of the street, but you couldn’t help it. Truth be told, you don’t think anyone could.

After the snap, it was almost second nature to see people randomly burst into tears. Every place you went someone was mourning someone else. This made the guilt of not finishing Thanos off that much worse.

Did these random citizens of France know that you were involved in this? Know that you were a great deal of the reason their loved ones were gone? You hoped not.

Several minutes later, you leaned away from him and he asked if you were alright. You nodded and began walking again back to your hotel. The two of you stopped into the bar in the lobby. It was rather full, and it made you wonder if more people were drowning their sorrows more than usual.

You two sat next to each other. You ordered a simple drink, as did Remy. Once you got the drink, you didn’t take one sip, you just played with the glass.

“So...how’d you find me?” you asked again.

“Well… when that… when the event happened, just about every one in the mansion disappeared. Only people left were about three students, Logan, Jean, and myself.”

“So Charles...Hank.. Scott...” you started listing off people you cared for. “They’re all…?”

He nodded solemnly while closing his eyes. The news slammed into you, hard. “Yeah. Well, after tying up loose ends there, I wanted to go find you. You’re the closest thing I got to family.”

All you did was nod.

“I went to the compound, but Shannon told me you ran away two months ago.”

You bobbed your head side to side. He wasn’t wrong.

“From there I started to think of places you might go. I checked New Orleans. I checked our hometown. Then I realized you once told me you and him planned on taking a trip over to Europe here. You said he wanted to go to Paris the most. Thought I’d give it a whirl.”

“Yeah,” you softly noted. “I thought I’d tour the places we wanted to go, you know? In honor of his memory.” You tried your best to swallow down the lump in your throat.

“Why’d you run away?” he suddenly asked. “You’ve never been the type.”

You scoffed, rolling your eyes. “Ever the charmer.”

“I’m not lyin’. So what is it? Shannon seemed pretty broken up that you were gone.”

You shrugged. “I’m sorry for that,” you started, “I just… After the snap, we thought we lost Tony, right? He was lost in space for over three weeks. We had no way to get in touch with him when he and Stephen and Peter all went up there. They were lost to us. Shannon and I were both facing grief. Her’s was worse, I think, because she didn’t know if he was dead, lost, or vanished.”

He nodded before you took a deep breath.

“Then just before Tony came back, I think I caught something between Bruce and her. I know both of them pretty well, and I think she loves Bruce. I think Bruce asked her to move on with him, when the time was right. The next thing I know, Tony’s home. Which was great. I was so relieved and thrilled… Then all this happiness was around me. Everyone gained Tony back. Bruce had Shannon and Tony, even Nat. Steve had everyone he cares about, except Bucky and Sam. Everyone was rallying together. Friendships were getting stronger. I just felt like I wasn’t needed. Shannon was so focused on Tony, focused on everything. Thor was my last connection to Loki and we haven’t spoken one word to each other since the snap. Asgard was destroyed a few days before Thanos came to Earth. So my home planet is destroyed. The love of my life is gone. My birth and adoptive parents are dead. We tracked down Thanos only for him to tell us he used the infinity stones to destroy them. So there’s no hope of any of them coming back…”

He reached over and placed his hand on yours, squeezing. “Y/N, cher, I am so sorry.”

You nodded, acknowledging his words. “I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be there for Shannon, who didn’t appear to need me anyway. I couldn’t pretend to be strong, or pretend like anyone wanted me there. Thor went to find a home for our Asgardian people who managed to escape with Valkyrie. I just was so… jealous of Shannon. She had her husband back. She had Bruce. She had Steve and the rest of them. All her friends, her family. She lost Peter but… I have nothing.”

“Hey, now, that’s not true. You got me, and you got her.”

A sad smile touched your face. “I know. I appreciate you coming to find me. But that’s why I left. When Tony came back, it reminded me that things always work out for her, and never for me. I just snapped, realized I couldn’t watch everyone be so happy. I was so bitter about it. I’m just in too much misery to watch that. I didn’t want to bring them down. Half of me was filled with bitterness, half of me didn’t want that bitterness to spill over into the small bubble of happiness they’d all found in all of this newfound Hell.” You shrugged, voicing your feelings for the first time, realizing them. It wasn’t so much that you left because you were jealous of Shannon. Of course you wanted her to be happy, she was your best friend. But you didn’t want to be an emotional burden on them, nor could you be there to pretend like you were fine, like everything was okay, when it was the furthest from okay you’d ever been.

“Sounds selfless, to me.”

You laughed without humor. “Ah, yes. Telling you I’m jealous my best friend is happy and that I can’t stand being around it. I’m a true saint.” You raised your glass and took a sip.

He shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m sayin’ at all. I’m sayin’ that you recognized that you needed to be alone.”

“You don’t think it’s selfish to leave Shannon?”

“Not really. She’s got tons of people who care about her. She’s gonna be fine. She’ll worry about you, but we both know if she knew where you were at, she’d come lookin’ for you. She might even try to convince you to come back, that everything will be okay. You need time to grieve and you can’t have that if everyone around you is crowding you with hope and positivity. You gotta do what’s best for you, darlin’.”

You nodded, slightly grinning. “That’s, uh, exactly right.”

The two of you caught up some more on what you’d been up to since the snap, nursing your drinks until the bar closed. You failed to mention the proposal. It somehow felt hard to bring it up to anyone. Tony was an exception because you thought he should know why you were so miserable. The bartender all but kicked you out, forcing you to stand in the lobby making you awkwardly bid Remy goodbye.

“Where you stayin’ anyway, cajun?” you wondered, nudging him slightly.

“Just up the street,” he informed. “I’ve only been here two days.”

You nodded. “Well, I appreciate you finding me. It was nice to have a friend again, for a little while anyway.”

“I came all this way just to find ya, and you’re just gonna kick me out? That’s cold, Y/L/N.” He gave you a signature smirk. When you didn’t really respond, his tone lost all jest. “Cher, I can’t let you be alone. Not like this. Let me stick around, be a shoulder to lean on. I want to make sure you’re safe.”

“You know as well as anyone that I can take care of myself,” you remarked seriously.

“I’m not talkin’ about getting into fights, which I know you’re gonna get into, given the state you’re in. I’m talkin’ about emotionally, mon cher. You’re hurting, and even though you don’t wanna be around the Merry band of the Avengers, maybe my company might make you feel a little less alone.”

“It would, Remy, but I don’t want to bring you down.”

He shook his head as he put both hands on your shoulders. “You could never do such a thing. I’m already pretty broken. You and I are just about all we got left in this world. I say we don’t waste that on feelin’ sorry for ourselves. We can grieve together, if you’ll have me.”

It took you a second, staring at him, weighing the pros of having him around. Of course you wanted him around. It wasn’t so much that you wanted to be alone, you just didn’t want to make anyone more depressed than they already were. But if Remy was certain that you two wouldn’t do that to each other, then you didn’t see the harm. In fact, he was probably right. You two needed someone in the world. All the Avengers had their counterpart… you needed yours too.

A soft look touched your face. “Alright. Yeah. let’s do it.”

“Glad to hear it. We can go everywhere you two planned on goin’. Tell me all about him. We can keep his memory alive, you and me.”

You nodded, feeling a dash of hope for the first time in forever. “I think I’d like that, and I think he would too.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List: @essie1876 @magpiegirl80 @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @iamwarrenspeace @marvel-imagines-yes-please @superwholocked527 @missinstantgratification @thejemersoninferno @rda1989 @munlis @thefridgeismybestie @bubblyanarocks3 @igiveupicantthinkofausername @kaliforniacoastalteens @feelmyroarrrr @kaelingoat-blog @friendlyneighbourhoodweirdo @damalseer @heyitscam99 @yknott81 @sorryimacrapwriter @glitterquadricorn @xxqueenofisolationxx @little-dis-kaalista-pythonissama @bittersweetunicorm @alyssaj23 @sea040561 @princess76179 @thisismysecrethappyplace @sarahp879 @malfoysqueen14 @ellallheart @breezy1415 @marvelmayo @random-fluffy-pink-unicorn @cocosierra94 @hardcollectionworldtrash @capsmuscles @marvelloushamilton @paintballkid711

Loki:

@lostinspace33 @ultrarebelheart @lenawiinchester @esoltis280 @tngrayson @wangdeasang @harrymewmew @jayfantasyatyourservice

UC: @lokis-high-priestess

#unforeseen chasm #loki x reader #loki fic #Loki Laufeyson #tony stark #tony stark fic #tony stark x ofc #endgame #remy #gambit

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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I belonged to another heated (but no longer debatable imho) ship were I've known a lot to be IH. And ofc I feel bad they have to bear witness to people so salty about the ending and hated Ino. I hate Ino too with burning passion, and that kinda made me feel guilty. But the psychology major in me was baffled as to how they conclude immediately w/ no analysis she was hated not only because of ships but because either she was written terribly, or she was written to be terrible. Or probably both.

Why cant Ichigo and Rukia be married to someone we could *infer* (because duh it’s not canon they will argue) they are in love with? Someone they have shown to share bond with? “Oh well, its becoming commonplace that the hero doesnt end up w/ main heroine, it’s revolutionary!” Bullshit. Sadly that is logic fallacy you dumbasses. Where’s the progress? Kubo tried, barely even. And again, it’s not even about the ships, its the entire work that has become an anomaly–Bleach as became Bleauuughch.

Again, I feel bad they have to bear the weight of evert criticism, the insult, and the salt of basically a majority of bleach fandom. But I hope they can tell that majority (like 99.99999999998%) of the criticisms are valid and not just hate. If they couldnt bear to actual do analysis of why people hated it, then dont bother plead or guilt trip or go to ppl inboxes why should we just move on. Well, majority already did that’s why all was left were ppl who couldnt be bothered with actual quality.

Here’s the ugly truth about people: they can’t read.

Or they don’t want to.

We have this holdover idea from the Enlightenment that if you can gather enough evidence in fine and exacting enough detail, that you can not only discern some kind of truth, but convince other people of it through the preponderance of evidence. And we have structured our society around that idea, from politics to law to science to academia in general.

The trouble is that that idea is bullshit outside of academia.

That is not at all how regular people approach the world.

And the more we rely upon an idea that people are rational, the more we will be lost at and disappointed by the actuality that people are irrational and emotional.

Consider climate change. The scientific community has had roughly 97% consensus that climate change is being anthropomorphically driven (that is to say, somewhere between overwhelmingly and entirely caused by human activity) since at least the very early 2000s, if not back much earlier. Indeed, we know that the oil companies were aware of it at least as early as 1981! And here we are in 2020, with some 31% of the population either unsure of or disbelieving in it.

Whenever the matter is debated politically, scientists will trot out their facts and drop them on the table and point. The facts are self-evident, they feel. And then the conservative politicians will shrug and say, “I don’t believe you.”

And the scientists have no idea what to do about that. Because to their minds, facts are indisputable. You cannot argue with them.

But you can, as the conservatives illustrate. You just choose not to believe in them.

We are witnessing something very similar with COVID-19 at the moment, with large swathes of the (American) population simply not believing it to be a threat, in spite of all available evidence to the contrary.

We see the same thing with political leadership debating the question of whether to prioritize health or economics, and our media treating this as if it is a legitimate policy debate, when we already know the answer to that question from the Spanish Flu of 1918: towns and cities that were locked down and quarantined suffered fewer casualties and had much faster economic rebounds.

People generally do not read.

People generally do not process.

People generally do not analyze.

People generally do not learn.

And if they can’t do those things for very large-scale existential threats that can threaten anything from tens to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, to the entire ecosphere of the planet, why would one expect them do so for a piece of fiction?

If people cannot handle cold, hard statistical facts, or simple arithmetic, then they certainly cannot handle something as “subjective” as facial expressions or dialogue. I have written recently about how the attitude toward non-fandom things (e.g., politics) increasingly resembles that of fandom, of approaching everything as though it is merely an aesthetic exercise.

That is really what we are dealing with here: ignorance. And not merely ordinary ignorance, not even willful ignorance, but an ignorance so deliberate and cultivated that its goal is nothing less than the total erasure of the facts. (The problem here, in this particular example, are of course the people who say unequivocally, “Ichigo always loved Orihime,” in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Someone who says, “It is clear to me this wasn’t a thing, but I like IH aesthetically,” is a non-issue.)

(Demanding or trying to force this former perspective does, as you suggest in the third ask, indicate a certain insecurity and a tacit admission that the perspective being advanced is illegitimate or poorly substantiated. However, for the people so enthralled to openly admit that is a psychological admission of defeat so severe that most would literally rather die than own up to being wrong to such an extent, and to suffer the attendant internal loss of face. So they seek continual external validation of it to shore it up.)

There is, in essence, no point in communicating with this kind of fan whatsoever. They are functionally like how Kyle Resse describes the Terminator in The Terminator:

Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

There is a lot of tepid discussion out there in political circles that the degree of polarization in society today is unprecedented and that a way to bridge that gap could be through shared interests and values. But in my opinion, fandom proves exactly the opposite is true: the reasons people like things that are nominally “shared interests,” and their view of those things and why they are good, are completely and utterly irreconcilable. There is, essentially, virtually zero overlap in a Venn diagram of the perspectives. Shared interests divide as much as they will ever unite.

In that regard, Bleach should be treated as both a warning and a grim assessment of our world as a whole. It is not really an aberration.

It is the future.

This community (among others) has simply been living in it a few years in advance of other people. Everyone else has gotten their first big taste of it with Trump. (The Republicans have been constructing an alternate reality since 1964, but comparatively few people were aware of how deep the rabbit hole went.)

In my estimation, it is not worth engaging with people over a shared interest with sincerity, let alone in good faith, unless you have done some degree of vetting of their perspective. Most likely observing them or their works for a time. Without that, you simply open yourself up to these people who show a total lack of discernment or rationality.

And that is a large part of why social media is such an absolute garbage fire, because as platforms they are built around precisely the opposite notion. (And largely in defiance of the idea that people might want to curate their experiences or might not want to have “healthy debate,” which is almost never healthy and seldom ever debate). Some would argue this leads to echo chambers and hug boxes, but it’s not like the alternative that these companies have produced (for profit, of course, rather than for of any ideological mission) is any better.

To boil it all down, what we are really forced to rely on (quite sadly) is a free market approach: no matter how much that side rages and waves their “canon” status around, they simply do not produce much content. They will starve long before our side does, regardless of any other factors. (Their “canon” status did not help them any in the past four years.) And the people who are agnostic (e.g., the “I’m Still Bleach” crowd that is for some reason vaguely invested in the series as a whole) will lose interest and move on to the next shiny thing.

The only thing that is necessary in the face of all this is really patience. In the meantime, the best thing is simply to ignore the existence of such parties utterly.

#Asks

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 5 years

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Lin-Manuel Miranda interview: from Hamilton to His Dark Materials

I know Hamilton remains wildly popular more than four years after it premiered on Broadway because of the intense response to my Instagram post boasting I have tickets to watch it the evening before meeting its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. "It's one of my absolute favourite things in the world ever!" raves one correspondent. "It's WONDERFUL and I defy you not to download the soundtrack afterwards," adds another. "I went last night! Second time. You're gonna love it."

The problem, however, is that I'm not sure I will love it. When theatre is great, it's the best thing on the planet, but when it is bad, as I have learnt from the bitter experience of watching three-hour open-air adaptations of Dickens' novels, it is the worst. Musicals are especially challenging: in my experience, you either like them or you don't, and given one of the few I have enjoyed was Avenue Q, which subverted the form, I'm in the latter camp.

Then, on top of this, there is the pressure of hype (and Hamilton has been more hyped than anything this side of the moon landings), and the challenge of taking hip-hop, which I love, out of an urban setting. It can easily go a bit Wham Rap!, or even worse, if you've seen the video, Michael Gove performing Wham Rap!.

It is, however, pretty good. The last thing the world needs is another long review of Hamilton, and I can't say I downloaded the soundtrack afterwards or that I didn't look at my watch occasionally, but using rap to retell the dry story of the founding fathers is inspired, and I'm so relieved that I blurt out my review to the 39-year-old writer and performer when I meet him in a restaurant in Fitzrovia. "I do find that with both Hamilton and In the Heights, my first show," responds the award-winning composer, lyricist and actor, "I get a lot of people who say to me, 'I don't really like musicals, but I loved this.' I attribute that to a very simple thing: my wife, who doesn't really like musicals. She didn't grow up going to see them, or doing theatre. She's a lawyer; when we met, she was a scientist. I have a higher bar to clear than most composers, because my first audience is my wife, and it can't just be a pretty tune."

You might recognise his wife, Vanessa Nadal, whom he met at high school, from the video of the couple's wedding reception in 2010, which like everything Miranda touches, went viral, and shows him performing the Fiddler on the Roof song To Life to his beloved.

Even my withered heart may have been momentarily lifted by it. She has accompanied her husband with their two young sons, aged one and four, to Britain, where he is filming a part in the BBC's slick new adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, though the reason he is in London today is that he has just been the subject of an episode of Desert Island Discs. The New Yorker takes a takes a swig of his coffee, which he tells me he chose as his luxury on his island ("I'm so basic"), adjusts his yellow baseball cap and asks me a question about the unsolicited review: "Why did you feel the need to say it?" There follows the most painful recording I've ever had to listen back to, as I make a bunch of ludicrous generalisations about musicals, speculating that perhaps they divide men from women, or the working classes from the middle classes, or straight people from gay people, or white people from brown people. It only strikes me a few minutes in that not only is Miranda living proof that the generalisations are nonsense, but I am essentially explaining musicals to a world expert in the form - a man who, before the age of 40, has a Pulitzer prize, three Tony awards, three Grammys, an Emmy, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Kennedy Center Honor, two Olivier awards, one Academy award nomination and two Golden Globe nominations to his name.

"Where do you want to start?" he responds with what is, in retrospect, startling patience. "You brought in all this cultural baggage and you're laying it at my feet and I don't know which bag to open." Another swig of coffee. "I think with musicals, it has to do with the way in which you interact with music in your own life. I grew up in a culture where dancing and singing at weddings was supercommon. So, if that's corny to you growing up, or you're taught to believe that's corny or unbelievable, then of course you're not going to like musicals."

...

He spent much of those years doing a bunch of badly paid, disparate jobs, which, given his nature, he nevertheless enjoyed. They included working as an English teacher at his former high school. ("I loved my curriculum. The class was exhilarating once I realised the less I talked, the more they learnt. I saw a future in which I taught at my old high school for 30 years and was very happy.") He wrote for a local paper as a columnist and restaurant reviewer. ("What kind of restaurant reviewer was I? Not very discriminating. If a new restaurant opened, I would go and eat some stuff and say, 'Hey, we have a Thai restaurant. I get to eat first at it. This is great!' ") And he made guest appearances on a number of TV shows including The Sopranos and House. What kind of roles was he being offered at the time? "I wasn't getting any roles! I was always the Latino friend of the white guy in the lead. And so centring ourselves in the drama, telling our own stories, is a big part of In the Heights, my first musical."

An unexpected thing about meeting Miranda is how instinctively he turns to the topic of his first musical, In the Heights, rather than Hamilton - not least when he talks about how he spent one month each year as a child with his grandparents in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, and was inspired by the gap between his worlds. "In Puerto Rico we were doctors and lawyers. And we're cabbies in New York; we're for the most part the poorer segment of society, and on TV we were always thieves and we were always the Sharks. In the Heights was a response to that. It was, 'Are we allowed to be on stage without having a knife in our hands?' " But then he has spent part of the summer filming a movie version of that musical, which is set over the course of three days, involving characters in the largely Hispanic-American neighbourhood. It is also the project that changed his life most dramatically. The more recent success of Hamilton rather eclipses the fact that his first show, which he began writing in the late Nineties when he was still a student at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, was also wildly successful. After success off-Broadway, the musical went to Broadway, opening in March 2008 and ending up being nominated for 13 Tony awards, winning four, including best musical and best original score.

...

Miranda, described as "a fantasy of the Obama era", has since been active in politics, lobbying and fundraising for Puerto Rico and performing with Ben Platt at the March for Our Lives anti-gun-violence rally in Washington DC on March 24, 2018. Does he feel demoralised by the drift of politics to the far right? "The thing about us all being connected online is that you can read all of the worst news from all over the world and be overwhelmed. You can't let it all in; just act on what you can act on." Should Trump be ignored or fought every step of the way? "It's hard to even discuss it, right, because Trump will have outraged us on two new things in the next [few hours], as soon as he wakes up, and it won't be relevant by the time we're having this conversation. And the same with Brexit, which is just as uncertain."

What did he make of Trump's revival of the phrase "Get back to where you came from" in relation to Democrat politicians? "It's unacceptable. Just because he said it doesn't mean it's acceptable." He leans back in his seat. "Here's my fear of getting into this with you: every time I've done a UK interview, I've said incredible shit and Trump's always the headline, even if I've only said two lines about it. So I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm really scared it's going to be the headline."

I risk another question. Would Miranda ever run for office? "It's funny - I remember when I was a teenager, my dad got approached by pretty serious people about running for a state Senate seat, and he said no. I asked, 'Why?' He said, 'I don't want to have to watch my mouth.' And for me, it's similar. I also have seen in my life, first-hand, the people who get addicted to running, and it's like their moment passed, but they're still running for something, because they're chasing that thrill of winning, and it's about much more than representing the constituents. I would never want to get stuck in that cycle or that pattern. It's more fun writing songs than doing any of that."

Read the rest here behind the Times paywall.

#lin manuel miranda #times uk #hamilton #politics and advocacy #in the heights #Interviews

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dillonldli-blog · 4 years

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«GOING BACK TO COAL IS LIKE GOING BACK TO THE BLOCKBUSTERS OF THE 80S»

As Governor of California between 2003 and 2011, he placed the State at the head of the world's green cities. We met with him after Trump decided to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austria, 1947) was always an outlier among the Republican ranks of the United States: he defended the right to abortion, gay marriage and the legalization of marijuana, and carried out a passionate environmental campaign during his tenure as Governor of California between 2003 and 2011 that placed the State at the head of the world's green cities. We met with him after President Trump - against whom he maintains an open dialectical war - decided to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Would you describe yourself as an ecologist?

Yes. However, the accusatory message that many people defend the environment does not work. It is necessary to promote things by celebrating them, to value what exists in nature so that the spectators fall in love with it. And here there are no ideologies. The defense of ecosystems, of the oceans, is a popular topic, because there is no republican sea or a democratic sea. We all drink from the same water and we have to protect our planet. You should not stop fishing or eating meat. We have to be smart in how we use things. It is like with money when you are in government. It all depends on how it is administered and that it is always left a little to the side when the time of skinny cows arrives. You can live on the interests instead of eating the capital. There are people, like James Cameron, who said that you shouldn't eat any meat. On the other hand, I believe that consumption should be reduced. I eat meat three times a week and the other four days I abstain. Cow overpopulation generates a lot of pollution. To be able to satisfy an absolutely carnivorous diet, you have to generate a lot of livestock, maintain large fields and have the necessary water and tractors. For that, you have to clear forests and jungles in various parts of the world, including Brazil. The correct formula is to do it in a measured and controlled way and, above all, with intelligence. To be able to satisfy an absolutely carnivorous diet, you have to generate a lot of livestock, maintain large fields and have the necessary water and tractors. For that, you have to clear forests and jungles in various parts of the world, including Brazil. The correct formula is to do it in a measured and controlled way and, above all, with intelligence. To be able to satisfy an absolutely carnivorous diet, you have to generate a lot of livestock, maintain large fields and have the necessary water and tractors. For that, you have to clear forests and jungles in various parts of the world, including Brazil. The correct formula is to do it in a measured and controlled way and, above all, with intelligence.

"In California, we demonstrate that you can protect the environment and improve the economy at the same time."

He grew up in Austria, surrounded by nature. Is your interest in the environment related to that childhood?

Of course. In Graz we led a rural life. My mother took carrots and potatoes out of the ground, we had a big garden and we lived on what grew there. The forest and wild animals were protected there, because you could only hunt a few months a year. I always had a lot of respect for nature. Back then, she did not imagine that one day we would endanger her. I never saw it as an environmental issue, but as something of everyday life. But, when I became governor, I started talking to scientists and analyzing studies, and I began to understand the magnitude of the problem. Then I realized that we were killing seven million people a year through pollution. I believe that the Government should defend the people and, therefore, It is your responsibility to do everything in your power to protect the environment, eliminating polluting fuels, transforming garbage into energy, and preventing pollution from reaching the oceans. That is why I implemented very severe environmental laws in California. They are among the strictest in the United States and even in the world. Thus, we demonstrate that one can protect the environment and improve the economy at the same time. Last year, growth in the United States was 0.7, while in California it was 5. We achieved a We demonstrate that one can protect the environment and improve the economy at the same time. Last year, growth in the United States was 0.7, while in California it was 5. We achieved a We demonstrate that one can protect the environment and improve the economy at the same time. Last year, growth in the United States was 0.7, while in California it was 5. We achieved aeconomic boom protecting ecosystems. That is what should be applied worldwide.

France is certainly at the forefront in everything that has to do with defending ecosystems.

The French did an extraordinary job last year. In fact, they have been doing it for quite some time. When it was determined that France would host the Paris Agreement, contacted California, not only with the current governor but also with me. They told me they needed my help. There is no way that a single government can rescue the world, we all have to do it together. That is precisely what I talked about in my welcome speech to the students of the University of Houston. I told them never to think they could go far without counting on others. No one succeeds. We have millions of people who helped us. And what the French did was really smart. They had a vision of where they wanted to go. Hollande invited me, we had a meeting in which he explained to me that the objective was to achieve a global agreement to be signed in Paris. They planned it very well and we all participated until we came to fruition. They went country by country looking for compromises. And when the signing date arrived, they knew what to do to get it. A process that could have taken 20 years was resolved very quickly. So Hollande, no matter how much he has had his problems, will always be a great leader for me. I think the challenge now is to protect what has been achieved. It is much easier to get a document signed than to comply. Therefore, it is very important for us to understand what role the ocean plays in all of this. Half of the food we eat comes from the sea. Half of the oxygen is generated there. It is an essential element for life on Earth and that is why we have to protect it. We must do everything in our power. It is not something that only governments can solve. They can only do so if the private sector, that of charities and individuals participate. I think what has made the United States the country it is today is the things that have been generated from the ground up. The civil rights movement started like this. Washington was not interested in solving the issue of racial conflict. The movement for the female vote also started in the same way. The North American Government had no interference in the matter. The The North American Government had no interference in the matter. The The North American Government had no interference in the matter. TheApartheid was not completed by the South African Government, it was the people who fought for it to end. The examples are many. It was the Indian people who gained their independence. The English Government had no other choice but to accept and grant it. The same goes for the ecological theme.

What is your opinion that the President of the United States denies climate change ?

What matters is that we move forward. When he speaks in favor of the use of coal, I am the first to criticize him and say he is going backwards. We must take advantage of new technologies. We don't want to use coal in our power plants, which is prohibited in California. Going back to coal is like going back to the blockbusters of the 80s. It's a thing of the past. No one will ever use horse-drawn carts when trucks exist.

“Half of the food we consume comes from the sea and half of the oxygen is generated there. We must protect him »

Looking back, what are you most proud of as governor?

I think the most important thing is that I never thought about what could be good for me, but what I could do for others. My parents taught me that you have to give back to your country and, since I was a bodybuilding champion, I thought about how to use my stardom to improve that sport and inspire the rest of the world to exercise more. When I got to know the Paralympic Games through my in-laws, I became excited and became a coach, traveling with disabled athletes around the world to make the Paralympic Games accepted by society. When I became governor, I did so because I felt the need to suspend my film career to serve society. And, while I was there, I think the most important thing that I achieved was the approval of environmental laws, with which we managed to make our state a leader in the rest of the world, marking the path that had to be taken, especially in what has to do with green and renewable energy. I also managed to get a package of measures approved for stem cell research that was once the most important in the world. I was able to achieve certain political reforms by establishing open primaries for Democrats and Republicans and by changing the electoral diagram, because the political system in the United States is corrupt. The politicians design their districts according to their political convenience, but in California, from my mandate, it is the people who design those districts, not the politicians. I must say that I enjoyed it very strange. If I had been born in the United States, I would have run for the presidency. I think it would have had an impact similar to when I ran for governor. It was very easy for me to stand out from the crowd, especially since I had things to say and a mission to accomplish.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has said he is planning to launch his own presidential bid. Do you see future?

I don't know, but what I'm sure of is that he's very smart. He is a great athlete and a charming person. He has great vision and good intentions. In addition, he has come so far with his career, and has done so by leveling up step by step, that anything is possible for him. I'm glad you're thinking about it. I think I opened that path in the same way that Ronald Reagan, or John Glenn, who was an astronaut, did before me. Bill Bradley did it too - he was one of the best basketball players and then he was a senator. Professional politicians don't like these career changes. They believe that they should have a monopoly on politics. So when someone steps into the game from the outside, like I did, they don't like it too much.

"I moved to the land of opportunity and I certainly had mine"

Would something change in your life?

No. It has been so wonderful that I would not change anything, not even my mistakes, my failures or the ups and downs. I am a happy man and I would not exchange my life with anyone else's. I always thank God and the United States, because I did not achieve things alone, they always helped me a lot. I think I got to the right country. I moved to the land of opportunity and I certainly had mine.

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deniscollins · 5 years

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Protesting Climate Change, Young People Take to Streets in a Global Strike

Youth are current and future consumers, and future employees. What can your organization do to appeal to the rapidly expanding climate change youth movement? How can your company address their concerns?

Anxious about their future on a hotter planet and angry at world leaders for failing to arrest the crisis, masses of young people poured into the streets on every continent on Friday for a day of global climate protests. Organizers estimated the turnout to be around four million in thousands of cities and towns worldwide.

It was the first time that children and young people had demonstrated to demand climate action in so many places and in such numbers around the world.

They turned out in force in Berlin, where the police estimated 100,000 participants, with similar numbers in Melbourne and London. In New York City, the mayor’s office estimated that 60,000 people marched through the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan, while organizers put the total at 250,000. By the dozens in some places, and by the tens of thousands in others, young people demonstrated in cities like Manila, Kampala and Rio de Janeiro. A group of scientists rallied in Antarctica.

“You had a future, and so should we,” demonstrators chanted as they marched through New York City.

Then, “We vote next.”

Banners in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, ranged from serious to humorous. One read, “Climate Emergency Now.” Another said, “This planet is getting hotter than my imaginary boyfriend.” In Mumbai, children in oversize raincoats marched in the rain. A sign in Berlin declared, “Stop the Global Pyromania.”

“Right now we are the ones who are making a difference. If no one else will take action, then we will,” Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist whose one-person strikes in Stockholm helped ignite a global movement, told demonstrators in New York City. “We demand a safe future. Is that really too much to ask?”

Whether this global action solves the problem that the protesters have identified — arresting greenhouse gas emissions to stave off a climate catastrophe — now depends on how effectively climate advocates can turn Friday’s momentum into sustained political pressure on governments and companies that produce those emissions.

Nowhere is that more true than in the United States, which has produced more emissions than any country since the start of the industrial age, and which is now rolling back a suite of environmental regulations under President Donald Trump. Organizers said there were demonstrations in all 50 United States.

“In no way is today the end goal but is only a catalyst for future mobilization,” said Azalea Danes, 16, a high school student in New York City. “We will continue to strike.”

Megan Mullin, a political scientist at Duke University, said that would be crucial.

“The challenge is translating something that is a global movement into a kind of concentrated political pressure that can influence government decisions,” she said. “It needs to be translated to influencing decision makers who aren’t already convinced.”

The protests were also notable for where they didn’t take place: China, which is currently the biggest greenhouse gas emitter of all.

While it was impossible to determine exactly how many people protested worldwide, a preliminary analysis by The Times found several cities had turnouts in the range of 100,000 and many more in the tens of thousands. Rarely, if ever, has the modern world witnessed a youth movement so large and wide, spanning across societies rich and poor, tied together by a common if inchoate sense of rage.

“They are mobilized around an issue of consistent concern across countries and across geographic areas,” said Dana Fisher, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who studies social movements. “It spans the developing-developed country divide. There aren’t that many issues that would unify in such a manner. And we all know the burden of climate change will fall on these kids’ shoulders when they are adults. They are acutely aware as well.”

The day began in the Asia-Pacific region.

More than 100,000 protested in Melbourne, in what organizers said was the largest climate action in Australia’s history. The rally shut down key public transport corridors for hours. In Sydney, thousands gathered in the Domain, a public park east of the Central Business District — grandparents escorting their children holding homemade signs, groups of teenagers in school uniforms, parents handing out boxed raisins to their young children.

“Adults are, like, ‘Respect your elders.’ And we’re, like, ‘Respect our futures,’” said Jemima Grimmer, 13, in Sydney. “You know, it’s a two-way street, respect, and I’m angry that I have to be here.”

In Quezon City, in the Philippines, protesters, including one dressed as Pikachu, the Pokémon character, held a sign that read: “Dead Planet Soon. Act Now!”

Thousands turned out in Warsaw, the capital of coal-reliant Poland. And roughly 100,000 demonstrators gathered around the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, according to the police. “Make the World Greta Again,” read one placard.

Across Britain, there were protests from Brighton to Edinburgh. The turnout in London was large, with organizers estimating more than 100,000 participants as well.

Theo Parkinson-Pride, 12, was passing by the Palace of Westminster with his mother Catherine, 45, who said she had emailed her son’s school to tell them he would be missing classes on Friday. “I said to my mum, I feel this is more important than school today because soon there may be no school to go to,” Theo said.

In New York City the demonstration got underway around midday, but participants began assembling early at Foley Square and it was clear that turnout would be large. Thousands of marchers eventually made their way out of the square, heading toward an afternoon rally at Battery Park.

Many brought handmade signs. “Think or Swim,” one read.

By late morning, protesters across the Eastern Seaboard were streaming out of schools and office buildings, pooling around steps of local city halls. The police in Baltimore blocked roads as students arrived on foot, scooter and skateboard. In St. Petersburg, Fla., about 200 protesters convened at City Hall, including one dressed as a polar bear with a sign that said “Climate Action Now.”

[Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.]

In Des Moines, Iowa, around 500 protesters with signs gathered outside the State Capitol, sweat rolling down their faces as temperatures hovered around 83 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 28 Celsius.

A day after Tropical Storm Imelda swamped parts of southeast Texas, crowds in Houston chanted, “Our streets flood, so we flood the streets.”

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of San Francisco, chanting, “Green New Deal, make it real,” and carrying signs that read “The sea is rising, so must we.”

Many websites went dark in solidarity with the protests or posted statements of support.

At the Seattle headquarters of Amazon, hundreds of employees walked out, continuing pressure on company leaders to do more about climate change. Those workers won concessions this week, as Amazon vowed to be carbon neutral by 2040 and to order 100,000 electric delivery trucks.

But the workers demanded more action on Friday. They asked Amazon to stop providing cloud-computing support to fossil fuel companies and to stop giving donations to politicians, and groups, who have resisted efforts to take more action to halt climate change, holding signs that read “Amazon: Zero $$ for Political Climate Denial.”

Certainly, this is not the first time in modern history that young people have galvanized around a cause. Young people led social movements against the Vietnam War and for civil rights in the United States. So, too, against apartheid and in the global antinuclear movement.

The youth climate movement is different, say those who study social protests.

At a time of fraying trust in authority figures, children — who by definition have no authority over anything — are increasingly driving the debate. Using the internet, young people are organizing across continents like no generation before them. And though their outsize demands for an end to fossil fuels mirror those of older environmentalists, their movement has captured the public imagination far more effectively.

“What’s unique about this is that young people are able to see their future is at risk today,” said Kumi Naidoo, the head of Amnesty International and a longtime campaigner for environmental issues. “I certainly hope this is a turning point.”

An early test of the student protests will come on Monday when world leaders assemble at United Nations headquarters to demonstrate what they are willing to do to avert a crisis. Their speeches are unlikely to assuage the youth strikers, but whether the youth protests will peter out or become more confrontational in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen.

“They’re going to call ‘BS,’” Ms. Fisher, the sociologist, said of the protesters. “It’s great for people at the United Nations summit to posture and say they care about this issue, but that’s not enough to stop the climate crisis. These kids are sophisticated enough to recognize that.”

#Youth #Climate Change

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harryandmeghan0-blog · 6 years

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Prince Harry pays tribute to Prince Charles' fight to save environment and vows to continue his work

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/prince-harry-pays-tribute-to-prince-charles-fight-to-save-environment-and-vows-to-continue-his-work/

Prince Harry pays tribute to Prince Charles' fight to save environment and vows to continue his work

The Duke of Sussex has paid loving public tribute to his father, in a speech in which he credits him for fighting to save the environment even when it fell on “deaf ears”.

The duke, speaking at the Australian Geographic Awards in Sydney, shared a series of prescient words from a “well-known conservationist” dating back to 1970, before revealing to the audience that they had been spoken by the Prince of Wales.

Saying the world must now act “urgently” to “stop the clock on the destruction of our planet”, he signalled the cross-generational campaign now at the centre of the Royal family’s work.

“My father and others have been speaking about the environment for decades – not basing it on fallacy or new-age hypothesis, but rooted in science and facts, and the sobering awareness of our environmental vulnerability,” the duke said.

“And while those speeches would sometimes fall on deaf ears, he and others were unrelenting in their commitment to preserve the most valuable resource we have – our planet.

“But let that be a cautionary tale. We are all here tonight because we care deeply about using the world’s resources wisely and safeguarding them for future generations.”

The duke, who is expecting his first child in the spring, added: “I am certain we are more aware of the need for this balance now, than ever before.

“The idea that these are the next generation’s problems is not a view we can accept.”

Prince Harry, center left, and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, center right, arrive at the Australian Geographic Society Awards, in Sydney Credit: Joel Carrett/AAP

Presenting awards to the scientists, academics and innovators already working to protect the environment, he concluded: “I am confident that positive and permanent change is on the horizon.

“Young people now innately understand far better than previous generations that we simply cannot continue to destroy our natural world, without facing major, irreversible consequences.

“And they understand that many of the solutions we need to tackle these issues can be found by working together and empowering communities to come up with long-lasting, sustainable solutions.

“It is going to take every single one of us to stop the clock on the destruction of our planet, and time is not on our side.

“The standard we walk past, is the standard we accept. It’s time to take personal responsibility and realise what a privilege it is for us to live alongside nature.”

Editor in Chief of Australian Geographic, Chrissie Goldrick, said: “‘This [the environment] runs in the family.

“Not only we have got Prince Harry out here, speaking on behalf of the environment in a powerful way, he’s not pulling any punches on his messages, but we also have Prince Charles, a long term environmentalist from back in the 1970s and now we have the Queen who is behind the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy project in a major way.

“You have got the three generations of that family stepping up for the environment.

“They really do have a power to help people focus. I can’t believe we are still arguing about climate change.

“So when you get people like that ho are not politicians or states people or scientists out there giving that message then people step up and take notice.”

As they left the ballroom , where the awards were taking place, to meet the winners, the Duchess was clutching a toy wombat that she had been given for her unborn baby.

She was also given a ‘numbat’, a small long-trailed marsupial native to Western Australia. There are fewer numbats in the world than Great Pandas.

Queen honoured for ‘outstanding contribution’ to conservation

The Queen was honoured last night with a special award for conservation for her initiative to highlight the plight of the world’s forests.

The award, for her “outstanding contribution” to global conservation was accepted on her behalf by the Duke of Sussex at an awards ceremony in Sydney.

The award, by the Australian Geographic Society, recognises the impact of the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, an initiative launched in 2015.

Chrissie Goldrick, editor in chief of Australian Geographic, said that the Queen had offered “vital leadership” to a project that “aims to tackle deforestation on a global scale”.

After its launch, she said, “the Queen quickly lent her enthusiasm and her support to this initiative. It is an ambitious initiative. It seeks to offer greater protection to the world’s native forests, and seeks to regenerate those that have degraded or pulled down. So far 42 countries of the 53 that comprise the modern Commonwealth have added over 90 projects to the canopy in a very short time. It is an idea that has really taken off.”

She also described how Harry was a member of the South Pole club. “That is usually quite an exclusive club, except when you are at an Australian Geographic Society event. There are lots of people who have been to the South Pole!”

Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, arrive at the Australian Geographic Society Awards in Sydney. Chrissie Goldrick, editor in chief of Australian Geographic, is seen on the right in the light dress Credit: Joel Carrett/AFP

She described him as “a passionately committed conservationist” and said that while in Australia he had made “the most of your popularity, your influence and your undoubted charisma to draw attention to a range of issues close to your own heart”.

She added: “When people like Your Royal Highnesses, held in such affection by so many, when you speak, people listen… You can change hearts and minds.”

The duke and duchess, who arrived late at the ceremony because of the delayed flight from Tonga, were there to present two awards.

The duke presented the award for Young Adventurer of the Year to Jade Hameister. Now 17, she skied to the North Pole aged 14, became the youngest woman to cross Greenland a year later, and this year completed a 37-day journey to the South Pole. She is the youngest person to complete the polar hat-trick.

The duchess presented the award for Young Conservationist of the Year to Sophia Skarparis. Aged 15, she started a petition this year to ban plastic bags in New South Wales, which led to a meeting with the state premier and her petition being debated in the NSW Parliament this week.

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swissforextrading · 6 years

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“In research, you need a sense of daring”

13.06.18 - Doris Leuthard, head of Switzerland’s Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, takes a hands-on approach. She rarely misses an opportunity to get personally involved, whether to attend the unveiling of NeighborHub in Fribourg in late April or to take part in the Forum des 100 conference on mobility at EPFL’s Dorigny campus. We spoke with her about the latest challenges in transport, energy and communication – three core areas of research at our school. What impressed you about NeighborHub? The whole project fascinated me. I learned about it after the Swiss team’s “famous” victory in Denver, and had the honor of taking Germany’s president on a tour of the building during his visit to Switzerland. NeighborHub’s success shows that a cross-disciplinary approach can be highly effective for resolving complex issues – and that such an approach is one of the strengths our country can leverage. The project brought together experts in fields ranging from energy and ecology to design, mobility and even food production. The project also shows the added value in bringing together EPFL, the University of Fribourg and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Each one added essential skills and experience to the project. How can this type of research initiative help foster progress in your department’s areas of focus? Every field of research has not only its own body of knowledge, but also its own methods. This type of cross-disciplinary approach can bring fresh ideas to discussions that experts from the same field might have among themselves. Also, we’re interested in tangible results, and that’s something NeighborHub delivers. We can market the building and integrate it into our society. This is the kind of initiative that can help effect change. What advice would you give to the current generation of students? That they need to take a proactive role if they want to advance their fields. According to EasyPark’s Smart Cities Index – which ranks cities according to criteria such as mobility, sustainability, energy, quality of life and digital infrastructure – Zurich comes in fourth place and Geneva, ninth. So we’re not on top, and still have progress to make in the areas that today’s youth are concerned about. How important is the research done by Switzerland’s specialized universities for public policymakers? You are our gems! You do excellent work that bolsters our country’s economy and global reputation. The Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne and Zurich are ranked among the best universities in Europe. You drive innovation and are at the forefront of the latest developments. For us it’s very important to stay updated on what your researchers are doing – what international projects they’re working on. We need to bring initiatives like NeighborHub out into the spotlight. They harbor useful new technology that should be shown and promoted to small businesses and society in general. Our talks with universities are a source of inspiration for us and point the way forward, including in terms of funding. Transportation – especially by air – isn’t exactly good for the environment, but people today are traveling more than ever. What are your priorities for responding to this growing need? Planes, trains or automobiles? I believe it’s dangerous to set priorities for specific means of transportation. Today’s lifestyles are shifting towards multimodal systems, and that trend is set to accelerate. Our strategy is to identify investment opportunities in various forms of transportation and infrastructure based on their environmental impact, energy use and the number of people they carry. Trains are clearly the best choice for long-distance travel, but when it comes to visiting other countries, flying is an inexpensive, quick and easy solution. All we can do there is question whether those low fares are appropriate or disconnected from the market. And there are the issues of CO2 emissions and the use of kerosene-based versus gasoline-based fuel. Switzerland is behind other countries such as Norway when it comes to electric vehicles. Do you have any measures planned to encourage EV use? We do fairly well when compared with other European countries. Norway clearly comes out on top, but that’s thanks in large part to subsidies – something we want to avoid. Our country’s car importers have set themselves the target of having 10% of new cars be electric by 2020 [the figure is currently 0.4%]. We could do more, but that would depend on three key variables: the vehicles’ range, their cost – which is increasingly in line with that of standard cars – and our country’s charging station infrastructure. We are in the process of building that infrastructure, but we need the support of cantonal and municipal governments as well as the private sector. The Swiss Federal Roads Office is encouraging the installation of charging stations at highway rest stops. For now, electric cars in Switzerland are exempt from taxes and duties, except for the highway pass. But given that these cars are driven on our roadways, it would make sense to eventually ask their drivers to contribute to the cost of maintaining those roadways. However, the timing for that is still very much up in the air. Doris Leuthard during one of her visits at EPFL, in 2013. ©Alain Herzog/EPFL How do you feel about self-driving cars? Do you think they could help alleviate traffic congestion and bottlenecks? I’m not sure if they could be part of the solution, but I do know that the technology is advancing at a rapid pace. In any case, those cars still need road infrastructure, so that doesn’t change our plans or investment objectives. It will be interesting to see the day when all cars on the road are autonomous. But in the meantime, as long as there’s a mix of driver and driverless cars, that won’t change traffic flows, speeds or safety. Plus there’s a number of legal and ethical issues that still need to be sorted out. This summer EPFL students will compete in the Hyperloop competition. Do you see a future for this technology? I see it as a visionary concept, like Solar Impulse. These ideas typically strike us as eccentric, or even unrealistic, but sometimes we need to think outside the box. Such large-scale programs usually result in many smaller projects that churn out genuine solutions. In research, including at EPFL, you need vision and a sense of daring. It would be a mistake to focus only on research where we know the outcome. We have to push boundaries, conceive the unconceivable. But that’s harder in politics, where we have to be pragmatic. And how do you feel about the planned underground freight system? We’ve been behind this project from the start. There are clear benefits to reducing the amount of freight traffic on our national highways, especially if the funding comes from the private sector. The idea seems feasible and I think the costs can be managed. Now it’s up to the project investors to decide – they will have to submit their plans to the Swiss Federal Council since a special law would need to be passed for the project to go through. The days for nuclear power as we know it are numbered. But Switzerland still has five operating nuclear plants that will need to be decommissioned. Do you think there’s much of a future for careers in nuclear engineering? Nuclear engineers, physicists and other such experts are still very much needed, and the dwindling appeal of this field is worrying. A nuclear power plant can run for 50 years and takes ten years to decommission, meaning we’ll need qualified personnel for our Leibstadt plant, for example, until 2045. That’s a long career for someone just starting out. But on top of decommissioning, there’s also R&D. We’re still involved in the ITER project because who knows – maybe we’ll see a major breakthrough ten years from now. Not to mention the possible applications in healthcare. You’ve had a lot of success championing various political issues. Which were you the most enthusiastic about? Probably Switzerland’s Energy Strategy 2050. That was especially tough in the months right after Fukushima. I asked myself a lot of questions – what should we do? What’s feasible? Do I have the courage to go through with it? To help find the answers, I worked with businesses, cantons and cities, as well as EPFL and ETHZ, which was all extremely interesting. The EPFL and EPFZ scientists did a lot to support us, providing expertise in areas like energy efficiency, renewable energy and economic feasibility studies. As a politician, I often have a hard time getting my head around the technical details, so it was nice to be able to draw on that network. Thanks to their support, I had the courage to stand behind the strategy, knowing that experts have confirmed that our plans are technically feasible. That left me with the political part of the job – getting the various parties, the Swiss parliament and eventually the Swiss people on board. What do you plan to do after you leave the Swiss Federal Council? There are a lot of things I’m interested in, but the first thing I plan to do is take some vacation. I promised my husband we’d go on a long trip and get a closer look at the wonders of this planet. After you go, there could be just one woman remaining on the Federal Council, down from four in 2010. Does that worry you? Yes, because in politics, as elsewhere, women are underrepresented. I plan to continue to defend women’s issues after I step down from the Federal Council. It’s true that there may be just one or two women on the Federal Council for a while. But I think there is already pressure to change that, especially on the PLR and the UDC which each have two seats. The women are there, but we shouldn’t look only at the federal level; there are also many female political leaders at the cantonal level who could serve on the Federal Council. Parliament just needs to elect them. Brief bio 1963 Born in the Canton of Aargau 1991 Admitted to the bar 2006 Elected to the Swiss Federal Council 2010 & 2017 Served as president of Switzerland 2017 Switzerland’s Energy Strategy 2050 approved in a referendum Anne-Muriel Brouet http://actu.epfl.ch/news/in-research-you-need-a-sense-of-daring (Source of the original content)

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yasbxxgie · 7 years

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A hilarious tale of humanity’s impending doom

In his new novel The Collapsing Empire, bestselling writer John Scalzi builds a fascinating new interstellar civilization in order to destroy it. The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old interplanetary trade partnership in humanity's distant future. Its member planets were once connected to Earth by the Flow, a natural feature of space-time that allows ships to enter a kind of subspace zone. Once there, they can circumvent the unbreakable speed of light to travel between stars that are dozens of light years apart. What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, nobody is asking that question. Humanity has created an entire civilization that relies on the Flow and its "shoals," where ships can enter and exit. Planets are colonized purely based on their proximity to the shoals, not on habitability. The result is not unlike a medieval trade guild society whose populace happens to live in domed cities, buried caves, and artificial habitats, completely dependent on trade for resources.

The problem is that the Flow, like most natural features, has a tendency to change shape over time. As the novel opens, our protagonist, Cardenia, recently crowned emperox of the Interdependency, has just made a nasty discovery. She learns that her late father has secretly been funding a Flow physicist who has determined that every planet in the Interdependency will be cut off from the Flow within the next decade.

In some ways, this novel feels like a zippier version of Dune. Representatives from different royal houses fight dirty for power, even as they lose their grip on the substance that makes their interstellar empires possible. As fans of Scalzi's work like Old Man's War, Redshirts, and Lock In are already aware, Scalzi is a master of action. And as fans of his blog Whatever know, he isn't afraid to get political. Plus, he doesn't give a crap if you disagree with him; in fact, he kind of relishes it, because it gives him a chance to insult you in the most creative ways imaginable.

There's something delightful about watching Scalzi's characters, from royals and palace guards to physicists and traders, have political brawls at several removes from our real-life problems on Earth. Still, there are echoes of home. At times, the ruling groups' reactions to the Flow are reminiscent of how our present-day Earth politicians react to news about climate change by calling science nonsense or by trotting out their own scientists to disagree. But as Scalzi pointed out in an interview with The Verge, the inspiration for his thought experiment was a lot weirder. He was wondering what would happen to Earth's great powers if the ocean currents suddenly stopped and shipping trade became impossible.

Though The Collapsing Empire is firmly in the space-opera tradition, Scalzi's style sets it apart. Conversational and hilarious, the book is epic in scope but intimate in tone. Instead of a portentous narrator telling us about impending doom, it feels like we have the wise-cracking Scalzi spinning a yarn over beers in the mess hall. Yet this funny narrator has a sharp eye, calling attention to hypocrisy and injustice without ever sounding preachy. This is obvious from the very first moments of the book's prologue, where Scalzi describes a mutiny, noting that it didn't go according to standard legal procedures:

A senior crewmember, preferably the executive officer/first mate, but possibly the chief engineer, chief technician, chief physician or, in genuinely bizarre circumstances, the owner's representative, would offer the ship's Imperial adjunct a formal Bill of Grievances Pursuant to a Mutiny, consistent with guild protocol. The Imperial adjunct would confer with the ship's chief chaplain, calling for witnesses and testimony if required, and the two would, in no later than a month, either offer up with a Finding for Mutiny or issue a Denial of Mutiny... Obviously no one was going to do any of that.

Despite the light tone and entertainingly profanity-laced dialogue, this novel is ultimately about power and its abuse. Each of the main characters may be, as one puts it, "an asshole," but they are also fumbling toward having an ethical position on how to save people from impending disaster. You'll be chuckling until the moment when you realize that Scalzi isn't providing any easy answers. If you want some amusing escapism full of guts and brains, The Collapsing Empire should be on your list.

The novel is the first in a series, but it's unclear how many books will follow—Scalzi has said only that he has a sequel in the works. Warning: the book ends on a cliffhanger, but there is still plenty of satisfying closure on the conflicts we've watched unfold. Plus, this is the first book to come out of Scalzi's 13-book, 10-year deal with Tor, so there will be plenty more Scalzi for you to read in the coming decade. The Collapsing Empire is a terrific start.

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