John Barnett, a former quality control engineer at Boeing who—just last week—testified against the company as part of a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit, has been found dead, the BBC reports.
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Barnett, 62, who previously worked for Boeing for three decades and retired from the company in 2017, was found at his motel in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday. The local coroner’s office says Barnett appears to have died as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot.
BBC reports that, in the “days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.” Barnett had been scheduled to appear in court again on Saturday for his third day of depositions related to the suit but never showed, the BBC reports. After his failure to appear, a call was put out to look for Barnett. He was subsequently found dead in his truck, which was in the parking lot of the motel he was staying at, the outlet writes.
Gizmodo asked the coroner’s office if an autopsy had been performed on Barnett. While the office didn’t answer that question, it did share the following statement about his death:
The Charleston County Coroner, Bobbi Jo O’Neal, is releasing the name of John Barnett, a 62-year-old male from Louisiana. Mr. Barnett died on March 9, 2024, from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Charleston City Police Department is the investigating agency. No further details are available at this time.
When reached for comment by Gizmodo, Boeing provided the following statement: “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
Barnett had previously voiced concerns that Boeing employees had attached “substandard parts” to planes and that some of the aircraft had “faulty oxygen systems” that could lead to a significant number of oxygen masks malfunctioning, The Hill writes. A subsequent FAA investigation seemed to substantiate some of Barnett’s claims. The lawsuit that Barnett was involved in at the time of his death was a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit that he had filed against the company. Barnett accused Boeing of pushing him into retirement in response to the safety concerns he raised. Boeing has denied any wrongdoing.
Gizmodo also reached out to an attorney for Barnett but haven’t heard back yet. We will update this story if we do.
It’s hard to know where to start in describing how bad Imaginary is. The new horror movie from Blumhouse and director Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) starts with the simple but promising premise of a haunted stuffed animal and a malicious imaginary friend, but its bland characters, muddy storytelling, and lack of scares leave behind a movie more lifeless than a teddy bear with no stuffing.
Imaginary’s mess of a story begins with a woman named Jessica (She’s Gotta Have It and Jurassic World Dominion’s DeWanda Wise) and her new husband, Max (Tom Payne), waking up after one of Jessica’s recurring nightmares. She’s being chased through a long hallway by a giant spider, who also happens to be the main villain in the children’s books she writes. The couple quickly decide that it’s time for them and Max’s two kids from a previous marriage, teenage Taylor (Taegen Burns) and much younger Alice (Pyper Braun), to move into Jessica’s childhood home, in hopes that the familiar setting will cure her of her nightmares. Max’s kids aren’t too happy about the move, though it isn’t quite clear how far they’re going or what their specific objection is.
It isn’t really clear whether we’re supposed to believe Jessica wants to get along with her new stepdaughters, or if her rudeness to them is an accidental problem of the script and the performance. Either way, after a few days in the house, Jessica ignores Alice by sneaking out of the house during a game of hide-and-seek in order to take a work call, leaving Alice to explore the basement and find Chauncey the creepy teddy bear.
Photo: Parrish Lewis/Lionsgate
Chauncey quickly becomes Alice’s new imaginary friend, who she talks to constantly and takes with her everywhere. This part of the plot strongly evokes M3GAN, without ever getting near that movie’s knowing sense of fun. All this setup happens by about 10 minutes into the movie, and it’s also where the coherent details of the plot end.
[Ed. note: The rest of this story contains significant spoilers for Imaginary. The good news is, reading about them is much more fun than sitting through all 104 minutes of the movie.]
Chauncey’s arrival should also usher creepiness into Imaginary, but the movie gets so diverted by trying to piece together a story out of its myriad meaningless plot threads that it doesn’t have much time to dedicate to actual horror. In one scene, for instance, the children’s biological mother shows up at Jessica’s house without warning, attacks Jessica, reveals that she seems to psychically know there’s something evil in the house, gets arrested, then disappears for the entire rest of the movie. This scene is never brought up again.
Shortly after that, Max just leaves his children with their new, clearly not up-to-the-task stepmom so he can go on a seemingly indefinite tour with his band. There’s also a creepy neighbor who just happens to have a fully illustrated academic textbook on imaginary friends that seems tailor-made for a lazy exposition scene. The movie even throws in two separate child-abuse plotlines that it eventually just shrugs off when they aren’t useful anymore.
It’s tempting to try to read into this labyrinth of digressions to try to find some kind of meaning or intention, but Imaginary never makes that feel worthwhile. There isn’t a single character in the movie who feels worth rooting for, and the performances are entirely devoid of charisma. The script, written by Wadlow, Jason Oremland, and Greg Erb, is full of wooden dialogue that’s stiff and often feels almost completely nonsensical. Characters sometimes introduce new information like it’s a fact the audience has known forever.
At other times, they treat seemingly obvious plot points like major, unguessable reveals — like when we find out that Chauncey once belonged to Jessica. None of these plot threads ever amount to much, and most of them are just left dangling by the end of the movie. If the filmmakers don’t care about them, why should we?
Photo: Parrish Lewis/Lionsgate
But as with any horror movie, most of this disaster could be overlooked if only the story was scary. Instead, that’s where its failures become most apparent. Imaginary doesn’t bring a single original idea to the horror genre. It’s entirely paint-by-numbers filmmaking that never even manages to create tension, let alone fear. Characters look under beds while the cloying score brings in a swell of strings to beg us to feel something. Chauncey moves on his own a time or two, and even transforms into a monstrous bear, but the scenes are lit so badly that the effect just looks cheap and underbaked rather than remotely terrifying. Watching sequences this rote is soul-crushing for a horror fan, and they make the moments where the movie slows down for its next attempt at a scare feel like they drag on for ages.
The one briefly interesting sequence comes in the final third of the movie, when Alice has been tricked into visiting the world of the imaginary friends, and Jessica and Taylor have to rescue her. This world floats in darkness, and its only solid ground is a checkerboard floor in an endless hallway of doors. Sections of the world form staircases to nowhere, dead ends that drop into an abyss, and doors that seem to float upside down.
None of these visuals are wholly original — they take aim at the middle ground between Twin Peaks’ Red Room and a Scooby-Doo chase scene, without any of the fun that combination implies. But even without originality, it’s far and away the best visual of the movie. Sadly, for most of their time in this world, the characters just charge blindly into doors and end up in the same boring rooms we’ve seen in the rest of the movie, each one shot essentially the same as it was in the real world, just a little bit darker.
Imaginary didn’t have a high bar to clear. In a year that’s been lacking interesting horror movies so far, with the other Blumhouse entry Night Swim as the only real bright spot, all this movie ever really needed to be was some silly fun with a few good scares. Instead, it gets lost in a maze of awful storytelling and frustrating characters, all without offering anything more than the stock-standard horror tropes that have been done better in a million other movies.
Lava flows across snow-covered ground in southwestern Iceland.Photo: Marco Di Marco (AP)
Southwestern Iceland has been a world transformed over the last few months, as initial tremors gave way to a full-throated volcanic eruption. The fishing village of Grindavík was evacuated in November, along with popular tourist destinations like the country’s Blue Lagoon, as residents held their breath for a potential eruption.
And lo, a little later than expected, in December 2023, a large crack in the ground made by the initial quakes began to spew molten rock, captured in some remarkable photos. Another eruption happened last month, and now, a resurgence in volcanic activity forced lava across the snow-covered landscape in southwestern Iceland. The recent eruption—the third in as many months—started around 6 a.m. local time Thursday.
“The power of the eruption has decreased. Now it is erupting mainly in three places on the crater that opened this morning,” Iceland’s meteorological office reported at 2 p.m. local time. “This is not unlike what was seen in the December 18 eruption, when the activity shifted to individual craters a few hours after eruption.”
The lava flows and cooled rock from the recent activity have blanketed swaths of the region, as you’ll see in the following photos.
Authorities in Chile’s Valparaiso region extended stay-at-home orders as forest fires continue to rage after killing at least 56 people in the country’s deadliest disaster since a massive earthquake in 2010.
Blazes that began on Friday spread through bushland and into populated areas on the edge of the coastal city of Viña del Mar, about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Santiago, fed by blustering wind and high temperatures.
Power and water services have been disrupted, causing Chile’s second largest oil refinery to halt operations. As firefighters continued to battle the blazes, authorities said the fires may have been intentionally lit.
“It’s evident that there was intentionality” when four separate fires start simultaneously in the same forest, Valparaíso Governor Rodrigo Mundaca told reporters on Sunday.
President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency in the Valparaiso region late Friday. In a televised address on Saturday, he said that the death toll could still rise. Boric is traveling there again on Sunday.
The government estimates that between 3,000 and 6,000 hectares (7,413-14,826 acres) and 1,000 homes have been razed so far, with at least 1,600 people occupying shelters as authorities and NGOs start relief efforts. More than 300 people are still unaccounted for, according to officials.
Enap, Chile’s state-owned energy company, halted operations at its second-biggest oil refinery after wildfires caused power cuts. The Aconcagua plant on the country’s central coast was placed in a what’s known as a safe position to begin gradually restarting operations, a company official said in text messages late Saturday.
The transport of copper from the large Los Bronces mine in central Chile has been unaffected by the fires, according to operator Anglo American Plc. Codelco didn’t immediately provide comment when asked about any logistical impact on its nearby Andina mine.
— With assistance from Matthew Malinowski
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This April, when a 1,000-year storm drenched South Florida, my father and older sister were among the thousands of people abruptly hit with severe flash flooding. They made it out physically unscathed, but many of their possessions were reduced to waterlogged piles of debris. Among those ruined mementos were sets of baby clothes, which my sister had painstakingly preserved for the future but forgotten during the rush of the flood. More than half a year later, she’s still grieving them. “Stuff is stuff,” she told me. But those pieces of clothing had been in the family for decades; she had worn them, and so had her 2-year-old. She just wished, she told me, that she could have held on to those outfits, “and my daughter could have had them for her kids.”
People living in hurricane or earthquake zones have long been taught to be ready for the worst, but these new threats make “all hazards” preparedness that much more important for everyone, no matter your location. Emergency-management guidelines in the United States already include recommendations for every household to keep a supply kit on standby, with a more compact version that can be mobilized in case of evacuation. Both should contain emergency medications, copies of identity documents, food, water, and other essentials. “What you put in those ‘go bags’ are the items that really are essential to you,” Sue Anne Bell, a researcher and nurse practitioner who specializes in disaster response at the University of Michigan, told me.
But in talking with experts about disaster preparedness, I was surprised to find that recommendations on storing personal possessions in those bags are basically nonexistent. That necessities come first makes sense: These items can make a life-and-death difference in moments of crisis. But ever since members of my immediate family were displaced, I have started thinking about a third way to prepare for the uncertainty of extreme weather and the disasters that follow—what I like to call my “climate carry-on.”
This bag can now be found, zipped up and resting on a shelf in my bedroom closet, ready to be wheeled out if the need arises. In it, I have stashed away some of my most prized personal objects: photos of loved ones swaddled in pieces of clothing inherited from relatives who have died; a tarnished ring, priceless to me alone; a stack of journals teeming with childhood ramblings. All are relatively small physical mementos that I consider my most indispensable belongings. All are things that I’d like to one day be able to share with a family of my own.
Most of the advice about preparing for an extreme-weather-related calamity is extremely practical, for good reason. “First and foremost, we need to safeguard our lives,” Fernando Rivera, a professor at the University of Central Florida who studies the sociology of disasters, told me. Bracing for the realities of recovery—grabbing physical copies of identity, medical, employment, and financial documents to help with disaster assistance and insurance claims—comes second. But survivors of climate disasters can benefit from preserving other meaningful parts of their life too.
Bell told me that losing a home and certain possessions can affect a survivor’s well-being throughout the recovery process. In a small, qualitative study about supporting elderly patients through a disaster, the in-home caregivers she interviewed described the stress and personal devastation their patients experienced from those losses after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. “There’s a kind of trauma that comes along with knowing everything you’ve worked for in your life is something that you no longer have,” she said. That can affect “their larger health trajectory, as they’re trying to recover from a disaster in advancing age and feeling like they’re starting over.”
Although it varies person-by-person, life changes after disasters do cause grief that can manifest in health complications, Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, a psychologist and Georgetown University professor who studies the effects of trauma, told me. And if these hazards put someone in a state of chronic stress, they can lead to serious physical health problems, including cardiovascular dysfunctions and cancer. “Extreme trauma and loss from a disaster, that’s a given,” Dass-Brailsford said. In the immediate aftermath, a person’s focus is typically on physical safety and navigating any remaining threats; the interwoven mental- and physical-health effects usually come later. “Once that’s done, and you’re settled down a little bit, the enormity of what happens then strikes people,” she said—problems such as headaches and stomach issues can suddenly flare up terribly, as she’s seen in her own patients.
Losing personal property and, for those permanently displaced by a disaster, the place they live, can mean that survivors fare worse psychologically, according to Dass-Brailsford. She was a Hurricane Katrina first responder: “I remember walking through the rubble, looking at things that were lost during the storm, and wanting to pick things up and save them,” she said. She remembered thinking that “this is someone’s treasured object, and it was just now going to be sent to the dump.”
Some may balk at the suggestion of packing away belongings that they’d rather see every day. Precautions like this can seem unnecessary—and it’s easy to tell yourself you’d move quickly enough to save what matters in case of a crisis. But although we may feel we are ready for an unexpected disaster event, that perception can often be far from reality, Bell, the University of Michigan disaster-response researcher, told me. A 2021 study she led found that, even for the basic steps of all-hazards readiness—having a stocked emergency kit, having conversations with family or friends about evacuation plans—people believed they were more prepared than they actually were.
When measuring well-being after disaster or success in recovering, the focus is on quantifiable indicators, Sara McTarnaghan, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute who studies resilience planning and disaster recovery, told me. Disasters can put people in debt, or land them in the hospital. But, she said, hazard preparation shouldn’t just consider those tangible aspects of recovery. “As people, we’re often boiled down to those financial resources,” McTarnaghan said. When I asked her how people could better prepare for other types of loss they might experience, she stressed the importance of mental health, which climate-hazard-recovery processes tend to put less emphasis on. Reminding people that sentimental belongings—whether a photograph, a figurine, or an item of clothing—matter too could be a small stride toward helping them recover emotionally after a disaster.
Of course, the objects that would be most meaningful to save will differ from person to person. And that’s probably one reason it’s harder to find guidance about selecting and storing personal property ahead of a calamity, McTarnaghan said. Thinking about this question at all is a good first step. “I absolutely encourage the reflection of some of the more personal and sentimental pieces that also lead to loss for individuals,” she said.
Because searching for those items really isn’t what anyone should be doing in the rushed moments before evacuating, or as they start to shelter in place. No one should prioritize personal memorabilia over their own physical safety. Think of a climate carry-on as an optional supplement to a disaster kit and go bag. The latter two reflect the things we can’t live without; the first, the things we’d rather not.
Still, creating a climate carry-on isn’t a bad idea, Rivera, the UCF sociologist, said. He has thought, too, about the possibility of a communal repository, where things that matter to people could be stored and easily accessed year-round, further encouraging community-wide hazard resilience. “Individually, you never think that you’re going to be in that situation,” he said. But climate change is that much of a threat, becoming all the more real in our daily lives. Some of us will end up in that very position, forced to swiftly determine what we consider irreplaceable.
My dad never fathomed he would be displaced by a flood until he was watching the waters rising around him. “As the water increases, you have to, right away, rationalize what is important and take it from there,” he told me. If he could go back in time and pack a bag full of memories, he would stuff it with objects that are now lost: a collection of books he’d kept with him for decades and photo albums of his parents, his brother, and his sister, all of whom he’s lost. But of course, not everything can fit. He was thinking, too, of a rug worn down by multiple countries and moves, and a box of schoolwork and memorabilia handcrafted by my siblings and me.
“I saved a good amount,” he said. “But the rest of it? It’s gone. And you have no choice but to move on.”
Following the release of the Tesla cyber truck’s official specs and crash test data, some safety experts have weighed in calling the new vehicle a “death machine,” citing its poor sight lines, substandard crash test results, 3.5-ton weight, and sharply angled steel body. What do you think?
“This is why it’s important not to do crash tests.”
Faima Brown, Brewery Tour Assistant
This Elon Musk Deepfake Cannot Be Real
“Sorry, but sharp, blind, and heavy is what consumers want.”
I liked Crash Team Rumble. I even said as much on this very website when the brawler MOBA launched back in June. But man, seeing them add Spyro, Crash’s flying, fire-breathing, OG PlayStation platformer contemporary to the roster just makes me wish we had a new Spyro the Dragon game.
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Spyro is set to join Crash, Catbat, and many of the bandicoot’s other friends and foes in Crash Team Rumble when its third season, titled All Fired Up, launches on December 7. The purple dragon joins Ripto (one of the series’ villains, who was strangely added before the hero himself in the second season) as a guest character, alongside Elora, the guiding fawn companion from the original trilogy. Not much is known about how Spyro will play, but it’s curious that Crash Team Rumble has been adding Spyro crossover characters, music, and cosmetics two seasons in a row, huh?
My hope is that this is more than just lip service and that publisher Activision is actually planning to make a substantive Spyro announcement in the near future. Back in September, rumors of a fourth mainline Spyro game circulated on sites like Reddit, but the specifics of the alleged leak, such as an October reveal and Spyro Reignited Trilogy remake artist Nicholas Kole being attached to the project, were debunked. As fun as Crash Team Rumble is, it’s not the Crash Bandicoot or Spyro game I want, and I know that sentiment rings true for a lot of fans.
Even if Crash Team Rumble isn’t what fans are looking for, Activision has been investing pretty heavily into Crash Bandicoot since it had a soft reboot with the Crash N. Sane Trilogy in 2017. That collection remade Naughty Dog’s first three Crash games for modern systems, then Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled followed in 2019. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, a brand-new platformer, launched in 2020, and was a really solid, challenging spin on the original formula.
Spyro the Dragon, meanwhile, has been getting scraps in this wave of OG PlayStation platformer love. The Reignited Trilogy brought his original three Insomniac-made games to modern systems with a new coat of paint in 2018, but it’s been 15 years since the last brand-new Spyro game. The little purple guy has pretty much been relegated to a crossover cameo here and there in Crash Bandicoot games.
I grew up on these games, and even if the mascot platformer has mostly gone out of vogue, I would still play a Spyro or Sly Cooper game in 2023. But while companies love to throw little references and crossovers into current games, that rarely leads to a new game. Spyro has been showing up in Crash’s adventures for years now, and with each passing year that he doesn’t get his own comeback game, these crossovers feel more and more like a carrot on a stick, leading nowhere.
I’ll still probably boot up Crash Team Rumble to play Spyro, though. So guess I should put on my clown makeup.
Humanity is on course to transgress multiple global “tipping points” that could lead to irreversible instability or the complete collapse of ecological and institutional systems, a United Nations report warned Wednesday.
The third annual Interconnected Disaster Risks report from the U.N. University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn, Germany, found that drastic changes will occur if urgent actions are not taken around six moments when sociological systems are no longer able to buffer risks.
The tipping points include several issues that California is confronting head-on — groundwater depletion, rising insurance costs, extreme heat and species extinction. The other threats are melting glaciers and space debris. According to U.N. officials, “when one system tips, other systems may also be pushed over the edge.”
“The very practical consequence will be that much more people will live under very precarious conditions — so loss of life, loss of livelihood and loss of opportunities,” said Zita Sebesvari, deputy director at the U.N. University Institute and one of the lead authors of the report. “It does have cascading impacts.”
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The tipping points are growing increasingly interconnected through global supply chains, trade and communications networks, the report says. Those links offer greater opportunity for cooperation, “but also expose us to greater risks and unpleasant surprises” from ripple effects when one element begins to crumble.
An aerial view of the Port of Long Beach in February.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“We are moving perilously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points,” the report says. The good news is that it is not too late to make changes to avoid or at least delay the worst possible outcomes.
According to the analysis, groundwater depletion is one problem with major potential consequences. Roughly 2 billion people worldwide rely on groundwater as a primary source, but 21 of the world’s 37 largest aquifers are already being depleted faster than they can be replenished.
The tipping point for groundwater occurs when existing wells are not sufficient to reach the water table and access to groundwater becomes prohibitively expensive or problematic, the report says.
By that criterion, California is already on the cliff’s edge, as industrial agriculture and other uses are sapping supplies so quickly that more than 5,700 wells are currently dry and thousands more are at risk, according to state data. Groundwater depletion is also contributing to land subsidence, with some areas sinking as quickly as 1 foot per year.
At the end of the Coachella Canal, Colorado River water is routed to ponds that are designed to replenish groundwater.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Surpassing the tipping point could have dire consequences not just for local communities but for global food production, the report says. In California, officials are attempting to rectify this through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act — a landmark piece of legislation that seeks to limit groundwater use, but with a timeline for implementation that could take decades.
“The long-term vision is to balance out the infiltration and recharging of groundwater with the taking out of groundwater,” Sebesvari said. “At least California does have a management plan, which is quite outstanding, I must say, because many places in this group don’t have that.”
But groundwater is only one of a handful of tipping points facing California and the globe. Unbearable heat driven by climate change is also an element of concern. The U.N. report estimates that roughly 500,000 excess deaths were attributed to extreme heat annually between 2000 and 2019, and that 30% of the global population is exposed to deadly heat conditions at least 20 days per year.
This year, the planet experienced its hottest summer on record, with global surface temperatures in August 2.25 degrees above the 20th century average. Simultaneous heat waves plagued Europe, China and the Southwest, where Phoenix experienced a record 31 consecutive days of temperatures at or above 110 degrees.
Sebesvari said extreme heat is one area where adaptation, as opposed to mitigation, may be warranted, since places such as Pakistan and parts of India are regularly surpassing the threshold for livability. In Los Angeles, officials are already exploring adaptation measures such as the installation of cool pavement, the planting of trees and a possible city mandate requiring air conditioning in all rental units.
Meanwhile, Californians continue to face the looming threat of un-insurability. That tipping point will occur when the cost of hazards becomes so high that insurance is no longer accessible or affordable, leaving people without an economic safety net when disaster strikes.
Flames erupt from a home in Laguna Niguel, where a May 2022 brush fire spread to an oceanside neighborhood.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
California came perilously close to that point earlier this year when insurance giants State Farm, Allstate and USAA pulled out of the state, citing rising wildfire risks and other mounting threats.
In September, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara struck a deal to bring them back to California in exchange for a number of concessions, including the possibility of much higher premiums.
But the fix only served to underscore a burgeoning global crisis spurred by a sevenfold increase in the cost of disasters globally since the 1970s, according to the U.N. report. Last year, global economic losses from disasters totaled $313 billion.
The report arrives just weeks ahead of COP28 — an annual international climate conference that will be held in Dubai — and in the wake of the scorching summer that spurred dire warnings from scientists about the worsening effects of climate change.
It also echoes a major study published in September in the journal Science Advances, which found that the planet has crossed six of nine boundaries that suggest “Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity.”
While the U.N. report is largely focused on irreversible socioeconomic tipping points, the Science Advances study examined planetary systems such as ozone depletion and ocean acidification that are mostly reversible, but could alter living conditions on Earth if pushed far enough, according to Katherine Richardson, the study’s lead author.
Though the findings are distinct, Richardson said she agreed with the U.N.’s assessment. Its framework is “likely a better way to communicate the urgency of the existential crisis we have created for ourselves as it can directly be translated to people’s immediate condition and wealth,” she said.
In addition to groundwater depletion, rising insurance costs and extreme heat, the U.N. report highlights melting glaciers, ecosystem collapse and space debris as systems nearing precipices.
Wildlife officials conduct a count of dead fall-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River in January 2022.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
This summer, global sea ice coverage reached a record low — about 550,000 square miles less than the previous low set in August 2019, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The continued melting of ice and glaciers driven by human-caused global warming will have negative effects on freshwater availability for humans and other species, the U.N. report says.
Ecosystem collapse is similarly underway, with accelerating extinctions driven by land use changes, climate change, pollution and invasive species.
More than 400 vertebrate species have gone extinct in the last 100 years, and nearly a million plant and animal species are currently threatened with extinction, the U.N. report says. That includes several California species such as Delta smelt, Chinook salmon, California condors, gray wolves and mountain lions. California trees are also dying at a record pace due to drought, wildfires, bark beetle infestation and other threats.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed 21 species from the U.S. Endangered Species Act due to extinction, including a fruit bat, two types of fish, eight types of mussels and 10 birds.
Finally, there is space debris — the only non-terrestrial threat outlined in the report. There are roughly 8,300 satellites in orbit and nearly 35,000 other tracked objects circling the Earth. Many are used for global communications, early warning systems, weather monitoring and other purposes that help connect people and reduce disaster risk.
A tipping point will occur when there is such a critical density of objects in orbit that one collision could set off a chain reaction and take those systems offline, the report says.
Though there has been a push for space to be seen as a “global commons,” no such international agreement has been reached. (In fact, then-President Trump in 2020 issued a statement saying that the United States “does not view space as a global commons.”)
While each tipping point is a potential threat in and of itself, the interconnection between them is key to the report, according to Jack O’Connor, senior expert at the U.N. University Institute and one of the lead authors. He likened the systems to towers of wooden blocks, like in the game Jenga.
“We and our behaviors are slowly removing pieces one by one from the base, until at some point the system can no longer cope with the growing instability and it collapses,” O’Connor told reporters Wednesday.
He and other officials said their hope is that policymakers, world leaders and the public will factor the findings into decisions moving forward in order to prevent a worst-case scenario. It is important to consider the rights and opportunities of future generations in current planning processes, they said.
“Our report is not saying that we are doomed to cross these risk tipping points, but rather it’s supposed to empower us to see the paths that we have ahead of us, and to take steps toward a better future,” O’Connor said. “We are still driving the car. And we still have a choice.”
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Occasionally, in times of crisis, gaming studios and publishers have worked to raise funds for people in dire need of humanitarian aid. Last year, for instance, Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red contributed to a fund for victims of the war in Ukraine, and Fortnite publisher Epic Games funneled the proceeds of all purchases made in the popular battle royale for a two-week period to humanitarian relief for the region as well. Now, Cult of the Lamb publisher Devolver Digital is donating funds to aid Palestinians affected by Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and it is encouraging others to follow suit.
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On October 18, Devolver Digital announced that it was supporting relief efforts in Gaza on its official Twitter account, saying:
We’ve donated to United Nations Relief and Works Agency who are providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian families, we ask you to consider donating if you’re able.
As protests and rallies in support of Palestinians continue around the world, many others are also raising money for relief efforts. Political commentator and occasional gamer Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker and his Twitch community have raised over a million dollars to help Palestinians in less than a week. Hopefully, other companies will follow Devolver Digital in issuing their own call to action.
Around 100 employees at Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios Group are unionizing. This means around a fifth of the 500-person Swedish team is now bargaining with the company’s management for a fair contract.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Pikmin 4
IGN confirmed with a union representative that more than 100 workers have joined Unionen, a Swedish trade union. According to their statement, Avalanche Studios Group workers have been working toward joining a union since earlier this year, when members formed a local union board to bargain with the studio’s management over specific benefits, but the rep didn’t share specific issues. According to IGN’s sources, moving to a four-day work week is at least one issue the team has raised in its negotiations.
While one in five workers joining the union might seem small, Swedish union membership is different than what we typically know of unions in the USA, as workers can join a trade union without a union election. This means that around “70 percent of the country” is part of a union, according to data shared with IGN by Unionen.
Avalanche Studios Group provided the following comment to IGN regarding the situation:
As an employer, we’re committed to creating the best possible conditions for all Avalanchers to thrive. We support and welcome any initiative that goes in this direction. This also means that we listen, invite dialogue, and encourage people to bring forward their perspectives and needs. After all, it’s thanks to each and every Avalancher that we’re able to make the great games we’re known for.
U.S. military officials found the crash site of an F-35 jet that went missing after a “mishap” caused its pilot to eject from the stealth aircraft, prompting the base to post on social media and ask anyone with information to call in. What do you think?
“We can’t let our enemies know we’ve discovered flight.”
Heather Anzola, Pedicab Driver
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“This is why you should always take a picture of where you eject from your plane.”
Roman Latner, Tribute Organizer
“It’s scary to think that was just out there not killing anybody.”
Over 600,000 gallons of red wine rushed through the streets of São Lourenço do Bairro, Portugal, after two tanks at a nearby hilltop distillery broke open and sent the alcohol rushing through the town streets below. What do you think?
“It never occurred to me that alcohol could be dangerous.”
Joseph Boreen, Utensil Consultant
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“How come nothing delicious ever buries my town?”
Tara Pelletier, Systems Analyst
“A wonderful day for people who like to lick wine off the street.”
An earthquake has sown destruction and devastation in Morocco, where death and injury counts continued to rise early Monday as rescue crews continued digging people out of the rubble both alive and dead in villages that were reduced to rubble. Law enforcement and aid workers — Moroccan and international — continued arriving Monday in the region south of the city of Marrakech that was hardest hit by the magnitude-6.8 tremor on Friday night, and several aftershocks.
Thousands of residents were waiting for food, water and electricity, with giant boulders blocking steep mountain roads.
The majority of the deaths, at least 2,122 as of Sunday, were in Marrakech and five provinces near the epicenter, the Interior Ministry reported. Search and rescue and debris removal teams were out with dogs searching for survivors and bodies.
A survivor of the deadly 6.8-magnitude Sept. 8 earthquake cries as she sits on the rubble of her damaged house, in the mountain village of Moulay Brahim in al-Haouz province in central Morocco on Sept. 10, 2023.
PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images
The Friday temblor toppled buildings that couldn’t withstand the shaking, trapping people in rubble and sending others fleeing in terror. The area was shaken again Sunday by a magnitude 3.9 aftershock, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
There was little time for mourning as survivors tried to salvage whatever they could from damaged homes.
Khadija Fairouje’s face was puffy from crying as she joined relatives and neighbors hauling possessions down rock-strewn streets. She had lost her daughter and three grandsons aged 4 to 11 when their home collapsed while they were sleeping less than 48 hours earlier.
“Nothing’s left. Everything fell,” said her sister, Hafida Fairouje.
Search and rescue operations continue with the assistance of dogs for people trapped under rubble after an earthquake in the Amizmiz town of Marrakesh, Morocco.
Abu Adem Muhammed/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Help was slow to arrive in Amizmiz, where a whole chunk of the town of orange and red sandstone brick homes carved into a mountainside appeared to be missing. A mosque’s minaret had collapsed.
“It’s a catastrophe,” said villager Salah Ancheu, 28. “We don’t know what the future is. The aid remains insufficient.”
The worst destruction was in rural communities that are hard to reach because the roads that snake up the mountainous terrain were covered by fallen rocks.
Flags were lowered across Morocco, as King Mohammed VI ordered three days of national mourning starting Sunday. The army mobilized search and rescue teams, and the king ordered water, food rations and shelters to be sent to those who lost homes.
Some slept on the ground or on benches in a Marrakech park.
Earthquake survivors are seen in front of a tent after an earthquake in the Amizmiz town of Marrakesh, Morocco.
Said Echarif/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Tourists and residents lined up to give blood.
“I did not even think about it twice,” Jalila Guerina told The Associated Press, “especially in the conditions where people are dying, especially at this moment when they are needing help, any help.” She cited her duty as a Moroccan citizen.
Rescuers backed by soldiers and police searched collapsed homes in the remote town of Adassil, near the epicenter. Military vehicles brought in bulldozers and other equipment to clear roads, MAP reported.
Distraught parents sobbed into phones to tell loved ones about losing their children.
Women mourn the loss of their loved ones killed in the earthquake in Moulay Brahim, Al Haouz province, Morocco.
Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via Getty Images
Ambulances took dozens of wounded from the village of Tikht, population 800, to Mohammed VI University Hospital in Marrakech.
Many were trapped under the rubble.
A man cries as he sits on the rubble of a house in the village of Tikht, near Adassil, on Sept. 10, 2023, two days after the devastating 6.8-magnitude earthquake.
FETHI BELAID/AFP via Getty Images
Friday’s quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m., lasting several seconds, the USGS said. A magnitude 4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later, it said. The collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates occurred at a relatively shallow depth, which makes a quake more dangerous.
It was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African country in over 120 years, according to USGS records dating to 1900, but it was not the deadliest. In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck near the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. That quake prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.
Search and rescue workers dig in the rubble of a collapsed house as they search for the body of a 3-year-old boy, September 10, 2023 in Ouirgane, Morocco, two days after an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit central Morocco.
With the significant increase in deadly hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, and floods, The Onion asked Americans how they would like to die in the climate apocalypse, and this is what they said.
Alice Buchanan, Pet Store Owner
Alice Buchanan, Pet Store Owner
“Accidentally decapitated by FEMA helicopter blade.”
Patrick Burnham, Snorkeling Instructor
Patrick Burnham, Snorkeling Instructor
“Climate change isn’t real. I’m going to die by my toddler shooting me with a gun just like everyone else.”
Luisa Arellano, Therapist
Luisa Arellano, Therapist
“Mount Everest falls on me.”
Cayden Savage, Band Teacher
Cayden Savage, Band Teacher
“I’d like to live long enough that I can drown in an ocean that’s reached the middle of Nebraska.”
Tyler Cunningham, Musician
Tyler Cunningham, Musician
“Probably my private jet crashing due to how much smoke is in the air.”
Jill Snyder, Homemaker
“A self-inflicted gunshot to the head after seeing what those floods did to my begonias.”
Katherine Hee, Nurse
“Oh jeez, exposure, dehydration, famine, they’re all so fun. Do I have to pick just one?”
Clancy White, Doctor
“Personally, I know I can only be vanquished if the powers of water, fire, ice, lightning, earth, and wind all combine together to stop my evil plan.”
Leila Abdou, Journalist
“Can I drown in lava? Is that an option?”
Edwin Greene, Cashier
“Prank involving our last remaining food sources gone wrong.”
Tim McCullough, Claims Adjuster
Tim McCullough, Claims Adjuster
Joe Sobolewski, Electrician
Joe Sobolewski, Electrician
“Successfully escaping the wildfires and then choking on a big bite of hamburger.”
Anson Stevens, CEO
“Be killed in the uprising of my private military force in my post-apocalyptic bunker after they realize the concept of money is null and void and I’m hoarding resources.”
Angela Zager, Home Health Aide
Angela Zager, Home Health Aide
“Heat stroke in March.”
Arthur King, Lawyer
“I don’t have to wait for the future—I’m actually dying in a wildfire right now!”
Tyler Delgado, Dog Walker
Tyler Delgado, Dog Walker
“I’m not greedy. I’ll take any death I can get.”
Debra Smith, Artist
“Going outside to fetch the newspaper without sunscreen.”
Patsy Lyons, Radiation Therapist
Patsy Lyons, Radiation Therapist
“Screaming ‘This is all the fault of trans weightlifters’ while getting carried away in a mudslide.”
Byron Jacobson, Mechanic
“I will be the one killing, not dying.”
Dave Roundy, Mechanical Engineer
Dave Roundy, Mechanical Engineer
“Falling down the stairs and breaking my neck on my very first night in the bunker.”
Alicia Montero, Project Manager
Alicia Montero, Project Manager
“I look up at the sky and say, ‘Snow? It’s snowing in September?’ and then a big chunk of hail flies straight down my throat and I asphyxiate.”
Mosquito XR-127905, Bug
“Oh, don’t worry. My kind aren’t going away.”
Jesse Curry, Historian
“Well, you know, they say you die twice. Once, when you actually die from drowning in a flood, and the second time, when someone says your name for the last time because all of them also drowned in a flood.”
Weston George, Drummer
“Oh, I don’t know yet, but some kind of domestic terrorism, I bet!”
Donna Novak, Baker
“In a wildfire peacefully surrounded by loved ones.”
Marcus Howard, Comptroller
Marcus Howard, Comptroller
“I would like to die in a space shuttle explosion while trying to escape a dying Earth, please.”
Elaine Harding, Wedding Planner
Elaine Harding, Wedding Planner
“It’s gotta be one of the more painful pollution-driven cancers.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group that started a short-lived mutiny against the Russian government two months ago, is believed to have been killed in a plane crash. What do you think?
“Man, does Putin have good luck or what?”
Jeremiah Zeller, Glitter Specialist
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“At this time, my thoughts are with the mercenary community.”
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