There have been salmon in the Yukon, the fourth-longest river in North America, for as long as there have been people on its banks. The river’s abundance helped Alaska earn its reputation as one of the last refuges for wild salmon, a place where they once came every year by the millions to spawn in pristine rivers and lakes after migrating thousands of miles. But as temperatures in western Alaska and the Bering Sea creep higher, the Yukon’s salmon populations have plunged.
State and federal fishery managers have resorted to drastic measures to save them. In 2021, for the first time in Fitka’s life, regulators prohibited all fishing for the river’s two main salmon species — king and chum — even for subsistence. For the better part of three fishing seasons, thousands of Yup’ik and Athabascan fishers have been banned from catching the fish that once kept their families fed.
“We grew up with fishing, cutting fish, smoking fish all our lives,” Fitka said. “And to have it taken away just like that — without warning, without mentally preparing yourself — is traumatizing.”
Can a work of art be deeply flawed and still be great? One of the reasons that some once-revered works in the Western canon have been treated so shabbily in recent years is that, once a new lens is introduced that illuminates their flaws, critics have been exceptionally severe. But great things need a certain kind of patience and understanding to exhibit their greatness, especially as time passes and new critical standards come into play.
One of the biggest difficulties is the sheer complexity of the problem: even the simplest known bacteria have well over 100 genes and contain hundreds of kinds of molecules, all furiously interacting in a microscopic dance. The environment on the primordial Earth must also have been complicated: huge numbers of different chemicals, from metals and minerals to water and gases, all being blasted around by winds and volcanic eruptions.
“The experimental parameter space is almost infinite,” says Wilhelm Huck, a chemist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Now, a few researchers are trying a new approach: harnessing artificial intelligence to zero in on the winning conditions. Specifically, several groups have started using machine-learning tools that can identify patterns in data sets too huge and messy for the human brain to comprehend.
I expect the occasional aural pummeling at a trendy restaurant, especially in this post-gourmet era of fine food with dressed-down vibes. In fact, the clamor almost suits a certain raucous restaurant genre featuring extra martinis that taste like caprese salads and new American cookery that gut-punches us with flavor and decadence via mouth-watering citric acid, umami-rich MSG, meat on meat and cheese on cream — like fancy fare for high people. But that doesn’t necessarily make it enjoyable.
Claire Keegan's newly published short story collection, So Late in the Day, contains three tales that testify to the screwed up relations between women and men. To give you a hint about Keegan's views on who's to blame for that situation, be aware that when the title story was published in France earlier this year, it was called, "Misogynie."
The pandemic and climate change put us solidly in a new era of American urbanism, one that demands big plans to solve big problems. Whether in adapting to rising seas, reimagining downtowns, creating a green mass transportation network or addressing the housing shortage, visionary thinking is desperately needed in cities across the country. The story of San Francisco's Ferry Building serves as a valuable reminder that transformative urban change is not just possible but inevitable. The only question is what form it will take, and whether we will celebrate it or live to regret it.
The book shows how attitudes toward UFOs have changed over the years, not just by scientists and the government but also in popular culture. Those shifting attitudes have led to more openness about discussing sightings, and the national security implications of not knowing what they could be.