lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

BlackRock Steps Back from ESG Push

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:34:55 +0000

In a recent interview, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, signaled a shift in tone. The firm, once a strong advocate of ESG and DEI, is now taking a more “pragmatic” approach. Fink described the “woke” phase as part of a cycle and suggested it may have gone too far.

Looking past the word soup: what does it even mean for a financial firm to lead “environmental and social activism”?

As one Reddit commenter put it:

“None of this even touches on the absurdity of the proposition that an entity such as BlackRock could be considered an interlocutor for ‘environmental and social activism.’”

Another commenter sharpened that critique:

There’s a reason finance capitalist environmental and social plans focus so much on ‘consumerism’ and envision saving the world through a reduction of people and production, and in rent seeking, not a change in property ownership.”

The power of trust in global Influence

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:02:43 +0000

From the Bloomberg opinion piece: America Is Depleting a More Powerful Weapon Than Its Missiles (the answer is: belief in the truth of what the leader of the US tells the world about the war, peace and everything else.) an interesting tit-bit:

Contrary to the illusion held by many Americans, the BBC is not a government-run body, it is an independent corporation administered by trustees and funded by public subscription. Throughout World War II, millions of people in occupied Europe risked their freedom to hear its news. The penalty for those caught listening by German detector vans was deportation to a concentration camp.

The magic words with which its impeccably modulated announcers began their reports — “this is London” — resounded across the globe. After 1945, the BBC habit persisted. Tens of millions of people — especially in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia — even now prefer the Beeb’s foreign language news to the local variety, rigorously censored by their own governments. Voice of America has never achieved quite the same authority or reputation for impartiality, but it has been nonetheless useful and influential.

Tiny transmitter could help scientists understand surprisingly social wasps

nospam@example.com (Raj Shekhar) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:42:03 +0000

https://spectrum.ieee.org/rf-tags-wasps

An ultralightweight radio-frequency tag designed to be worn by a paper wasp may help scientists get a glimpse at some basic behavioral information that’s long been missing: where do the animals go when they leave the nest?

Getting the right combination of light weight, long range, and positional accuracy was key. Jettisoning the battery was the first step. “Batteries don’t scale,” says Blaauw. A miniaturized battery can’t provide enough current to generate a strong radio signal. Capacitors, which store energy by accumulating charges on surfaces, do better at small scales, Blaauw says. “Really small capacitors can store enough charge now to send a radio pulse,” he says. The capacitor used in the wasp tag weighs just 0.86 mg. A tiny photovoltaic array slowly charges up the capacitor until it has enough energy to generate a radio signal.