🦉what we're sea-ing from space

Your weekly source for stories *not* making headlines.

Happy Friday, muggles. Hope you had the chance to enjoy a nice meal and reflect on some things to be grateful for on Thanksgiving. While we recognize the variety of change and ongoing trauma of this year, we'd like to pause to celebrate a little bit of good. Our team is appreciating Europe's biggest economy, Germany, agreeing to a mandatory quota for women on company boards. Their decision follows Belgium, France, Italy, Austria and Portugal, who already have mandatory gender quotas for large listed companies.  CLIMATE NASA launches a new satellite to track sea level rise Sat Nov 21   NASA launched the truck-sized Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite into space over the weekend to track global sea level rise for the next five years. The satellite is named after the late Michael Freilich, an oceanographer and former director of NASA's Earth Science Division, who died in August.    This isn't the first satellite being used to track our sea levels. NASA has been tracking sea levels for 30 years, but this model comes with some new, cool upgrades: Higher resolution, which means it can track smaller coastline features than before Improved weather and hurricane tracking Updated forecasting for climate models and coastline shifts These improved measurements will help ship navigation and communities vulnerable to flooding. Europe and the U.S. are sharing the cost of this $1.1 billion mission, which will see a twin satellite launch in 2025 to complete the tracking.   SOURCES: CNN, USA Today, NBC News ENVIRONMENT Why we need start counting and mapping trees Fri Nov 20   Trees provide a lot of benefits to humans such as helping to decrease pollution and heat, but  racist housing policies in the U.S. have kept some neighborhoods from reaping the benefits.    What do trees have to do with housing policies and race? A practice called 'redlining' warned mortgage lenders and insurers of Black communities by outlining them in red on maps. Although the practice was banned in the 1960's, it still has compounding effects that have isolated Black communities. As a result, more resources, funding, and attention typically went to White neighborhoods — which is why you see more tree-lined streets in higher-income, White communities today. So interestingly enough, if you look at a map of tree cover, you can also effectively infer the income and race of an area.     To help combat this inequality, American Forests has started counting trees. They're assigning "Tree Equity Scores" to cities and counties with the hope of both addressing this systemic racism and fighting climate change.    So far the group is testing three regions: Maricopa County, the Bay Area, and Rhode Island, but they hope to cover 70% of the population by 2022. Google also released a new tool that maps tree coverage called Tree Canopy Lab, which is being tested in Los Angeles. L.A. plans to plant 90,000 trees in areas most impacted by extreme heat by next year.   📣 From the Soapbox This month, we're partnering with Soapbox Project, a media company that gives you action plans for social causes you care about. >> Take Action with Your Holiday Shopping! Put The Color of Law on your holiday reading list. You can buy it from an independent Black-owned bookstore here. The book documents how the U.S. government segregated America, including the creation of zoning laws that put Black communities in the same zones as toxic waste sites, a practice that still continues today.    SOURCES: Grist, Fast Company, Google, Brookings Institution INTERNET Your home internet might be getting a data cap Mon Nov 23   Remember that glorious feeling of switching your phone plan to unlimited data? Well, your internet might be going in the opposite direction. Starting in 2021, Comcast plans to charge home internet customers who go over 1.2TB of data a month. There are some important details to note here: Customers in the Northeast will be the ones impacted  It's already in effect for customers who don't have unlimited plans in other parts of the U.S. How much is 1.2TB of internet? Well, according to Comcast, 95% of customers don't come close to reaching those data limits. It takes about 3GB of data an hour to stream an HD movie and the company says the median monthly data use was around 308GB… but that was before the coronavirus pandemic had people working and learning from home.    If you're worried about new fees, you have a little bit of wiggle room. Comcast is handing out credits for people who go over in January and February, but by March customers could be charged $10 per 50GB of data above the cap. To avoid these increased fees you could upgrade to an unlimited data plan or buy your own router to monitor your data usage. If you're wondering if this is legal, it is. The FCC hasn't done anything to rule against data caps, but some past research shows that data caps don't lessen the strain on our internet infrastructure. Instead they just seem to cost people more. Yikes.   SOURCES: Gizmodo, The Verge, The Washington Post That's all for today. Have a magical weekend.✨ acciyo, Inc., 8605 SANTA MONICA BLVD, #78200, WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069, United States, 6176820435 Unsubscribe Manage preferences