Bolsonaro’s latest sales pitch? Come exploit the Amazon rainforest

Brazil’s Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has been called a ‘termite eating the ministry from the inside’ by his predecessor.

By Simone Preissler Iglesias and Shannon Sims.. at Al Jazeera English shared with thanks!

After fires devastated Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, US President-elect Joe Biden said the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro should face consequences if he continues to fail to protect it [File: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters]

Brazil’s environment minister has a vision for the Amazon — as a money-making venture open to business.

In meetings with international fund managers, Ricardo Salles pitches the rainforest as a novel opportunity ripe for investment. Where conservationists see a fragile region in urgent need of protection, Salles sells an image of cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies exploiting the jungle’s myriad exotic herbs, nuts and fruits.

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“We have to attract private capital to the Amazon,” Salles, 45, said in an interview last month in his office in Brasilia, a large map of Brazil’s environmentally protected areas on one wall and a view of the capital’s treetops behind him. “This is my approach in all of the meetings that I have in Europe and the U.S.”

Continue reading “Roll up! Capitalist Looters! Come and exploit the Amazon rainforest!”

The Quantum Internet Will Blow Your Mind. Here’s What It Will Look Like

The next generation of the Internet will rely on revolutionary new tech — allowing for unhackable networks and

By Dan Hurley from Discover Magazine shared with thanks..

(Credit: Jurik Peter/Shutterstock)

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This article appeared in the November 2020 issue of Discover magazine as “The Quest for a Quantum Internet.” Subscribe for more stories like these.

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Call it the quantum Garden of Eden. Fifty or so miles east of New York City, on the campus of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Eden Figueroa is one of the world’s pioneering gardeners planting the seeds of a quantum internet. Capable of sending enormous amounts of data over vast distances, it would work not just faster than the current internet but faster than the speed of light — instantaneously, in fact, like the teleportation of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

Sitting in Brookhaven’s light-filled cafeteria, his shoulder-length black hair fighting to free itself from the clutches of a ponytail, Figueroa — a Mexico native who is an associate professor at Stony Brook University — tries to explain how it will work.

He grabs hold of two plastic coffee cup lids, a saltshaker, a pepper shaker and a small cup of water, and begins moving them around on the lunch table like a magician with cards

Continue reading “This Quantum Internet model Will Blow Your Mind: info goes Faster than the Speed of Light.”