Factual Dispatch

The Air Force just disclosed they need as much money ($4.9 billion) to rebuild two bases flooded in the recent Midwestern wash out as Trump demanded for his monument to racism. With the rest of America's breadbasket recovering in ways that are just slightly superior than "Great Job Brownie," we are miles behind how the rest of the world responds to environmental disasters. Instead of focusing on the "once in a century" storms that seem to happen more and more often, I wanted to explore the slow, boring, and terrifying aspect of climate change: Land Loss.While Louisiana is the most obvious and most troubling domestic example of climate change accelerated land loss, it's also one that is somewhat distorted by our penchant for mislabeling wetlands as land. Florida has a similar problem, but those accounting tricks won't make up the difference in what is shaping up to be a deluge. Not just for any one state, but across the Atlantic even up to New York & New Jersey. The EPA estimates we lost lost 20 square miles of dry & wetland to land loss on the eastern seaboard between 1996 and 2011 alone. With that comes more frequent flooding, dystopia, and everything generally smelling like intense feet. And of course, this isn't just a domestic problem. Small islands are getting shellacked by climate change elevated sea levels. If you're one of those lifestyle/destination influencers you may want to start caring about this stuff, as the Maldives might not be around when you can finally to afford to fly there. Kiribati is essenitally a nation getting palliative care at the moment, as its pleas for intervention went unheard at the UN. To be clear, an entire country is moving to higher ground, as it will most likely be the first island nation to be entirely consumed by the rising waters. Meanwhile, in China...Across the Pacific over the last couple of years, the burgeoning tech scene in China has adopted a work ethic loosely referred to as 996 or 995. This refers to "9am to 9pm, 6(5) days a week," which has been blown past, turned into the 10125 or the 007 (which stands for 10am to 12am, 5 days a week, or omni-shambles midnight to midnight, 7 days a week). And when you work those hours, you end up in the ICU. This has led to a surprisingly durable protest movement among within the developer/start-up scene there. To the point where two companies, Youzan & JD, have been called out by name (with many others implicated) on a protest hosted on Github dubbed 996.icu. While China has had no qualms about shutting down websites, closing companies to China, or even just blocking IPs to maintain the Great Firewall, they are loathe to shut down or hamper Github. For our readers who don't go to tech stand-ups daily, Git & Github are crucial to software developer version control & workflows, so much of the tech community shuddered awake in protest when China tried to shutter the site using a DDOS attack back in 2015. Because it's critical to millions of developers in one of Xi's signature industries, housing of the protest page and community sounding board there gives it a level of security other places could never offer. Let's see if the work conditions change, because those kids deserve a break. Meanwhile, in Madrid...On February 22nd, a group broke into the North Korean embassy in Madrid, bound/gagged staff, and made off with computing equipment and other unspecified technology. While the people who think Pizzagate is real immediately blamed the CIA, the group that eventually claimed responsibility for the brazen mid-day attack is named Free Joseon (Hangul: 자유 조선) also known as the Cheollima Civil Defense. The name refers to the last dynastic administration of North Korea before the tumultuous events of the 20th Century for the Korean peninsula. The group declared that they transferred information they stole to the FBI, but there's been some confusion about what they actually took. Currently, the best guess we have is that there was some encryption equipment or laptops referred to as "transformation computers" by the North Korean military. The group has been fighting to remove the dictatorship, and if they're coordinating with the FBI (even though that doesn't really make sense given that the FBI's main focus is domestic law enforcement) or some other American intelligence service, Kim Jong-Un's administration might've suffered a massive blow. Which might be contributing to why they've kept quiet about it.Eye-Watering Data Visualization of the Week: Where the small arms humans have made are:Vaguely Dystopian News of the Week: This is a kiosk in a McDonalds near a prison in Kentucky. It just documents the names, faces, and crimes of people in the prison. No, you can't get nuggets from it.Huh, Interesting Read of the Week: An study published Behavioral & Experimental Finance journal this month showed that people who invested in a risky stock develop a memory bias in regards to good vs. bad investing decisions they made. To the point that they are less likely to remember mistakes and re-invest in a stock more and more. This bias isn't shared by those presented with the investment decision, so it really is true that you've gotta know when to hold'em, know when fold'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.Dunk of the Week: April bears down upon us like the rising waters. What have you sown in the first three months of the year?T