Kate Cox – These Toys Don’t Just Listen To Your Kid; They Send What They Hear To A Defense Contractor

Kids say a lot of random, unsolicited, or just plain personal things to their toys while playing. When that toy is stuffed with just fluff and beans, it doesn’t matter what the kid says: their toy is a safe sounding board. When their playtime companion is an internet-connected recording device that ships off audio files to a remote server without …

Dijana Damjanovic – Cotton farmers battle one of the worst cropping seasons on record after pesticide damage

The future of cotton growing in Australia is hanging in the balance, as the industry battles one of the worst cropping seasons on record. Water shortages, coupled with preventable pesticide damage, are bringing farmers to breaking point. From the Darling Downs in Queensland to the North Western Slopes of New South Wales, growers around the country are seeing the same …

Mark Esposito and Terence Tse – Our Prosperity Is in Peril Unless We Shift From a Wasteful World to a “Circular Economy”

The prosperity that we are enjoying today could largely be attributed to the industrial revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Yet this enhancement of our standard of living has come at a steep price: the creation of the so-called linear economy. In other words, we have a “take, make and dispose” economy. We take natural resources, make things …

Colorado river is collapsing ‘sooner than anyone thought

The Colorado River begins as snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains and ends 1,450 miles south in Mexico after making a final sacrifice to the United States: water for the farm fields in this powerhouse of American produce. Throughout the winter, perfect heads of romaine, red-and-green lettuce, spinach and broccoli are whisked from the warm desert soil here onto refrigerated trucks …