Remembering Audrey Hepburn 🌹on Her 91st Birthday ✨🎂 ✨💫💄💋

I don’t study genocides war crimes and human rights for fun. I study it bc my people have been at the foot from the very first genocide of the 20th century and previous attempts to exterminate my entire race. The fact that no one is speaking up when another genocide is at the brink of occurring to the ethnic Armenians living in Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) is mind blowing. I have to say I’m not surprised by the lack of effort - Americans, especially, are the most self interested humans I’ve met. This isn’t about narrative, this is about rapid belligerent individualism. We can philosophize all day about it but at the end - people don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. There is rarely any altruism left in this world. As Monte said, no ones gonna fight for us, we will have to fight on our own to survive. The alternative is not an option.

@sarinezeitlian on IG for the photos

NASA’s Satellite Data Help Save Lives

For the first time, measurements from our Earth-observing satellites are being used to help combat a potential outbreak of life-threatening cholera. Humanitarian teams in Yemen are targeting areas identified by a NASA-supported project that precisely forecasts high-risk regions based on environmental conditions observed from space.

Cholera is caused by consuming food or water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae.

The disease affects millions of people every year and can be deadly. It remains a major threat to global health, especially in developing countries, such as Yemen, where access to clean water is limited.

To calculate the likelihood of an outbreak, scientists run a computer model that takes satellite observations of things like rain and temperatures and combines them with information on local sanitation and clean water infrastructure. In 2017, the model achieved 92 percent accuracy in predicting the regions where cholera was most likely to occur and spread in Yemen. An outbreak that year in Yemen was the world’s worst, with more than 1.1 million suspected cases and more than 2,300 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

International humanitarian organizations took notice. In January 2018, Fergus McBean, a humanitarian adviser with the U.K.’s Department for International Development, read about the NASA-funded team’s 2017 results and contacted them with an ambitious challenge: to create and implement a cholera forecasting system for Yemen, in only four months.

“It was a race against the start of rainy season,” McBean said.

The U.S. researchers began working with U.K. Aid, the U.K. Met Office, and UNICEF on the innovative approach to use the model to inform cholera risk reduction in Yemen.

In March, one month ahead of the rainy season, the U.K. international development office began using the model’s forecasts. Early results show the science team’s model predictions, coupled with Met Office weather forecasts, are helping UNICEF and other aid groups target their response to where support is needed most.

Photo Credit: UNICEF

“By joining up international expertise with those working on the ground, we have for the very first time used these sophisticated predictions to help save lives and prevent needless suffering,” said Charlotte Watts, chief scientist for United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/2MxKyw4

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'Immense' potential of renewable energy could propel Australia to net zero 2050 target

Climate policy experts say Australia needs to set a more ambitious 2030 climate commitment to reach a carbon neutral economy

“Such a transition would create tens of thousands of new jobs in the renewable energy industry and “future-proof” the country from economic shocks as the rest of the world moved away from fossil fuels." 

In her new album "Uncivil War," electric blues singer Shemekia Copeland tackles institutionalized racism, climate change and capitalism with powerful vocals and timely lyrics.

Her previous album, "America's Child," is also a must listen for blues fans and anyone trying to find hope in this political landscape.

A love and a heart that kept on giving. Even when backs were turned against him and he was given nothing in return. One of the sweetest and STRONGEST souls I know. You inspire me daily. Inspiring me to be fearless, to love more, to give more, to be who I am without any apologies. My heart is still hurting knowing what you had to endure on this earth, but you are such a blessing to me, to so many. I thank God for you. My heart, my angel. This love is for a lifetime. I love you.

“The moral man is a lower species than the immoral, a weaker species; indeed—he is a type in regard to morality, but not a type in himself; a copy, a good copy at best—the measure of his value lies outside him. I assess a man by the quantum of power and abundance of his will: not by its enfeeblement and extinction; I regard a philosophy which teaches denial of the will as a teaching of defamation and slander— I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power